IF YOU THINK DRUG COMPANIES ARE NOT THE DEVIL, THINK AGAIN

You know I have always said that the food industry fattens us up and that the diet and drug industries profit by trying to fix the problems that the factory produced food causes. If you owned a business that sold products with a profit in the thousands of percent, would you have any interest in urging people to change their behaviors that would mean less sales of your products? The answer is NO. Drug companies do not want you to be well. They want you to be sick so they can continue to make obscene profits. Think about it, then go and buy some real food for yourself and your family.


Celebrex:100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $ 0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%




Claritin:1 0 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%



Keflex:250 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
Percent markup: 8,372%




Lipitor:20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%





Norvasc:10 mg
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%






Prevacid:30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%






Prilosec: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
Percent markup: 69,417%







Prozac:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%






Tenormin:50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0..13
Percent markup: 80,362%









Vasotec:10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
Percent markup: 51,185%










Xanax:1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%












Zestril:20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
Percent markup: 2,809






Zithromax:600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%





Zocor: /B40 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27 Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63 Percent markup: 4,059%





Zoloft:50 mg
Consumer price: $206.87 Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75 Percent markup: 11,821%

AMERICAN PASTORAL

You know how I’m always saying that if we increase demand for real food, that a lot of Americans would choose ranching and farming as a lifestyle? Clearly we can’t wait for the government to take away subsidies from BIG FOOD and give that money to struggling farmers. But guess what? People are giving up their day jobs and taking up farming and ranching and creating fabulous lives for themselves while they help feed the community.

Here’s one inspirational couple who you can buy organic meat from: Nature's Harmony.

Does anyone care what we eat? Yes, I think they do!

On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 84-year old Robert B. Choate, Jr. died. Who? Yes, that was my reaction too. But Mr. Choate was a frontrunner to all those who wish to see the end of “kid food” in this country.

Way back in 1970, this self-described “citizen lobbyist” testified before a Senate subcommittee for consumers that kids’ cereal was so much garbage. The cereal companies’ counterattack? Well, they whined, you have to dump sugar on everything or kids won’t eat it.

Mr. Choate made a dent, because some moms listened and stopped giving their kids the sugary poison. And now, the echoes of his championing are being heard finally by this new generation of moms.

A moment of silence for an unsung hero.

Read the New York Times article.

Link to the Virtuoso Life piece

Here's a link to the Virtuoso Life piece that you were so kind to weigh in on. It has a circ of 250,000. Page 174.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a killer

Feel like gagging? Watch the new ads put out by the High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) industry (below)











The ads make Americans look like idiots if they don’t exactly know the science about HFCS. If anyone asks you, all you have to say is “HFCS is an unnatural sugar, and I want to put real foods into my body.”



If you want to know more, read on.

Scientists have long known the dangers of HFCS and are learning more as they research the reasons why Americans have grown so fat. The number one reason for our obesity epidemic is HFCS.

HFCS is a refined, artificial fructose made from cornstarch and fungus and chemical processing. HFCS goes directly to the liver to release enzymes that tell the body “store fat immediately!” This urgent fat storage phenomenon results in elevated triglycerides (fat molecules in the blood).

When we eat, insulin is secreted from the pancreas, and this secretion of insulin triggers a sensation of being full and so most people stop eating. But HFCS does not trigger the flood of insulin and so people keep eating and eating and eating. In fact, in the 1900’s people at one pound of sugar per year, today Americans eat up to 150 pounds, or more, and most of this sugar is HFCS.

HFCS is devoid of enzymes, vitamins, and minerals and so eating this substance means that your body must rob its stores of nutrients in order to metabolize the HFCS you just ate. This is why people who eat a lot of factory food garbage look pasty, puffy, and ill, and have got to feel like walking death. As long as we’re talking about death, we might as well segue there.

There is something called the Maillard reaction, which is the reaction between sugar and proteins, which is responsible for the change in color, or browning, when a food is baked. HFCS browns food much faster than regular white sugar, and this rapid browning results in a loss of amino acid residues, decreased protein digestibility, the toxicity of protein in the body, and can even have carcinogenic properties. In simple terms, HFCS products that are baked, or “browned,” cause rapid aging, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

With all of this HFCS consumption, people are not only aging faster, getting fat, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, but, since fructose is metabolized in the liver, they are also developing livers clogged with fatty deposits and cirrhosis. OK if you want the liver of a life-long alcoholic or pâté de foie grois anyone?

HFCS extends the shelf life of factory food products, so what does that tell you? Do you really want to eat something that sits around in warehouses for months?

If you want fruit, eat real fruit. If you want early, ugly death, eat HFCS.

Now Mediterraneans are fat like us

I don’t completely agree with the Mediterranean diet. It worked fine when people were farming and roaming the hills tending sheep and they could burn off all the carbs from the grains. Now I think grains need to be eating in extreme moderation, according to how active you are. Nevertheless, the Mediterranean diet is leagues better than the American crap diet. But guess what? Greeks are now getting fat and their kids are obese. And we can all guess why. The handy-dandy food mongers are over there proliferating their hideous grease and toxin fast food drive thrus. Great. I rest my case. Factory produced food makes people fat and real food makes people thin. See the New York Times article "Fast Food Hits Mediterranean; a Diet Succumbs" here.

Love Thyself: That’s Sexy

When mulling over the topic of my first post in my series “That’s Sexy” it immediately came to me that the prevalent trait of sexy people is self-confidence. I’m not talking arrogance or conceit. I’m talking about a healthy respect for oneself. That’s sexy.

If you don’t like yourself, your natural inclination is to abuse yourself. If you live alone, for example, you may eat microwaved Lean Cuisine for dinner with a Diet Coke, and then polish off a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, then spend the rest of the evening watching stupid TV eating an entire bag of chips. You stop off in the bathroom before bed to brush your teeth and give yourself a tongue lashing in the mirror. Then you go to bed angry and stare at the ceiling, thinking more bad things about yourself.

If you genuinely like yourself, however, your natural inclination will be to do nice things for yourself, like make yourself a nice, dinner of real food with a glass of raw milk, or even a glass of a good wine. The rest of your evening will inevitably take a more enjoyable track.

But you can’t FORCE doing nice things for yourself like the Gestapo. The desire to treat yourself well comes from within. Begin by recognizing all the times during the day that you say hateful, disparaging things to yourself. You may be surprised at how harsh the inner voice is. Once you recognize this tendency, shut that voice down when you hear it by saying to yourself, “I recognize what you are saying, but I don’t agree. I love myself just as I am.” Say it a million times if you have to—even, and especially if you think you don’t deserve it. Even if you just ate that cookie dough ice cream. Especially if you just at that cookie dough ice cream.

Take a stand against self hatred and soon you’ll find a feeling of self love radiating from within yourself. Along with this newfound respect for yourself, you’ll find yourself relating to others in a more positive way. You’ll also find pleasure in treating yourself more thoughtfully, including feeding yourself healthy food, stopping the destructive cycle of dieting, and cutting down on all the prescription and OTC drugs.

Changes like that are truly sexy.

Dieters are learning how to enjoy food

Finally, dieters are turning in mass away from the processed diet garbage that made them fat in the first place and are eating real food and losing weight without trying. Read more here.

Dieting in any form (low calorie, low fat, low carbohydrate) ultimately results in rebound weight gain. Studies on starvation victims have proven that deprivation results in a myriad of aberrant behaviors such as obsessing about food, hoarding food, bingeing, and then feeling shame and guilt for eating. This describes millions of Americans who have dieted themselves into starvation. Malnutrition is also caused by eating a diet of factory produced food, as the body does not recognize these substances as sustenance, rather as incoming toxins that need to be processed. Some are eliminated, other toxins end up lodged in brain and other cells of the body.

My book Death by Supermarket: The Fattening, Dumbing Down, and Poisoning of America, explains how Big Food has made us fat, dumb, sick, and depressed, and now Big Diet and Big Drug industries are profiting.

The only way to be fit, healthy, smart, and sexy is to eat what I call an "historically eaten" diet of real food, stop dieting, and stop taking so many drugs. Real food is delicious and stops the cycle of craving and bingeing because it provides the body and brain with the nutrition necessary for survival and to thrive.