Smoking used to be considered normal, even attractive. Now we know how deadly it is, even at low levels of use. Eating animal foods is currently considered normal, yet what amount of animal products is safe to eat?
And How Much Meat and Dairy Are Safe to Eat?
Will smokers get much benefit from a resolution to smoke fewer cigarettes, as an alternative to quitting altogether? Decades of global research on tobacco use show cutting down on cigarette use is a positive step, but the health impact is not nearly as strong as you may expect.
For example, research in Norway found that smoking just one to four cigarettes a day increased the risk of death during the timeframe of the study by about 50%. An American Cancer Society study found that one to three cigarettes daily increased (more…)
These three excellent books will myth-proof your mind against dangerous industry tactics
Protecting Yourself Made Easy
The corporate takeover of health is here. You can see the results in soaring health care costs, millions felled by preventable illness, and acceptance of chronic disease as a way of life.
This post is the hundredth blog on my site. Myth-busting remains my specialty and whole foods, plant-based diets my passion. I’m celebrating by sharing with you three books that taught me how to spot corporate disinformation as easily as a keen-nosed dog can find smelly garbage. These models of myth-busting inspired me in writing The Perfect Formula Diet and still keep me going:
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America; Allan M. Brandt, Ph.D.
Appetite For Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back; Michele Simon
Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine; Dr. John Abramson
Here are insights from each book.
THE CIGARETTE CENTURY
While pretty much everyone these days admits cigarettes are unhealthy, what you might not know is the sordid history of the tobacco industry. These corporations pioneered underhanded methods to deliberately (more…)
Both smoking and animal foods can damage your heart and the arteries that feed it. Whole plant foods nourish your heart. Should be a simple choice.
And Two Important Ways They Are Different
The Surgeon General’s December 2010 report, How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease, is a gift for anyone interested in health. Of course, everyone knows that smoking is “bad.” This 727 page masterpiece vividly describes exactly how and why.
The Surgeon General has yet to release a report on the perils of animal foods. Yet compelling evidence shows striking similarities between smoking and eating meat, fish, dairy, and eggs. Here are twelve parallels between these dangerous habits.
1. Both smoking and animal foods damage your body through multiple mechanisms, including causing genetic changes, inflammation, and an increase in the free radicals that cause oxidative stress. Chronic illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, reproductive problems, and aggravation of diabetes are (more…)
Stumped for what to give your friends and family that already seem to have everything? Or even if they genuinely need another sweater, maybe you have different tastes. What if giving health were as easy as giving a package with a nice bow?
The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine just published a study showing that, as a country, we are losing ground to obesity. People are smoking less, which is great. Yet the hastening of death from obesity more than wipes out the gain from reduced smoking.
On average, because of being over their ideal weight, people will live a full
You can give the gift of health to yourself and others!
year less! Of course, this is an average. Normal weight people will not lose any of their allotted years, but obese people will lose a lot more.
Would you give your family or friends cigarettes as a holiday gift? Of course not! So why would you give them food that will shorten their lifespan as much or more?
If you are giving food as a holiday gift, choose yummy whole foods. Think about a fruit basket, dried fruit in nice packages, fancy nuts, or gourmet dark chocolate.
If you are serving food over the holiday or bringing a dish to a potluck, there are thousands of whole food recipes your party will enjoy. Check out the newsletter archives at Dr. McDougall’s site or the fat free vegan site with fantastic plant-based recipes. Not only will you be boosting health for one meal, but you will be educating all those enjoying your cooking. Maybe you’ll even set them on a path to permanent weight loss. Let them grab back that year that obesity is robbing them of.
The gift of health is truly the best, and yes, you can give it. Your example of your own healthy choices paves the way, educating and motivating others all year long.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
These Are the Health Facts, Whether We Want Them to Be or Not
Walk into your doctor’s office and find a coupon for cigarettes. Or maybe even a sample pack to “ease your stress.” As foreign as it may seem, this could have happened not that long ago. Physicians, well-meaning and helpful, pushed tobacco on their patients because industry assured them this was the right thing to do.
Millions of addicted people and their doctors yearned to believe smoking was healthy, or at least harmless. Public relations dollars on an unprecedented scale fueled their fantasy. Government agencies dozed in the back room, educating and protecting no one.
The dragonfly is there whether you see it or not
The tobacco industry manufactured confusion right along with cigarettes. Yet, as the English author Aldous Huxley so wisely observed, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Nor do these facts cease to exist for choosing a healthy diet and spurning foods that can be as harmful as tobacco is. Billions of ad dollars paint a mass fantasy of what people should eat, but all the money in the universe can’t change the basic facts of human biology and nutritional needs.
You have a naturally perfect body. Learn the real facts to protect yourself and turn your health around with a whole foods, plant-based diet. When you find out, you will want to tell everyone you know the simple secrets to losing weight and reversing chronic disease.
As Aldous Huxley also said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
