Diet Lies and Misinformation

5. Carbs are bad. This lie is believed so widely it is quite literally dangerous to the health of an already unhealthy nation. In fact, what are bad are naked, or refined, carbohydrates. In the way they have an effect on our bodies similar to sugar, while having very little or no nutritional value, they can be considered poison. Complex carbohydrates, on the other hand, are the primary fuel on which the human body relies. Not fat, not protein, complex carbohydrates. Also, in the way that the carbs myth is disingenuously promulgated, it encourages the U.S. population, already the most obese in the world, to eat more protein-intensive (and therefore, more fatty) foods--to the great benefit of the meat and dairy industries (authors of the shameful cultural legacy, the four food groups, 3 of which were supposed to be animal products). Instead what is really needed is exactly the opposite: more consumption of complex carbs (not refined ones) and less consumption of fatty foods. It is no coincidence that numerous, varied, sources report, for a wide variety of reasons, that the optimal balance of crops grown on any piece of land involves some 70% grain crops, while at the same time various diet "movements" (such as macrobiotics, the only regimen in the world legally allowed to promote itself as, and proved to be, anti-carcinogenic) have shown that some 70% of the human diet should be grain-based, as traditional diets have been through the millenia.

4. To be healthy, one most eat copious amounts of vegetables. Related to the above points, it has been shown that optimal human health is achieved through vegan/vegetarian diets based on grains (70% give or take), with the remaining being divided among fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans, nuts), cultured products, possibly sea vegetables, and other items. One can easily see that vegetables, in the end, should make up significantly less than 30% of one's diet.

3. Aluminum pots cause Alzheimer's and other diseases. The fact that folks still state this as fact, and think that "recent" studies have shown it, is sheerly amazing to me. The studies on the subject are, for all intents and purposes, ancient. More importantly, they showed no causal relationship at all. All they showed was that aluminum was found in the lesions/plaques which develop in the brain with Alzheimer's. We have aluminum all through our bodies, naturally. These ancient studies did not prove any connection at all between aluminum pans and human health. It is worth pointing out, though, that the human is best off using steel or other cookware just because it works so much better than aluminum. (Additionally, the production of aluminum (by refining "raw" bauxite) is one of the most energy-intensive and toxic industrial procedures that there is.)

2. If one is going to eat meat or dairy, dairy is the better choice. There is no question at all that dairy products are worse for the body, ultimately, than meat. (To be clear: I am addressing only the health aspects, not the ethical aspects, of choosing one over the other.) One of the reasons for this fact is indirect--a person tends to eat much more dairy when they eat dairy than meat when they eat meat. As the human is unequivocally an herbivore (there are many books and web sources where one can look for relevant facts related to human physiology and natural history), both are bad, especially when not taken in moderation. More specifically, the more animal protein one takes in (whether dairy or meat), the more calcium the body draws out from the bones--as part of an effort by the body to neutralize the acidifying effects animal-product consumption. So it is that Americans, especially American women, have the highest rates of osteoporosis in the world, right on par with the Swedish and the Inuit. More dairy consumption equates to more bone calcium lost (milk most definitely does not build strong bones). Further, milk which is not human milk contains all sorts of hormones, many of them very powerful (to make small calves into big cows, for example), which are not meant for human consumption. Incidence of premature adolescence have skyrocketed over the last twenty years; at the same time, dairy consumption has increased more than 200%. Other than hormones (and water, of course), the largest piece of the make-up of milk, by far, is casein. Casein acts like glue on the intestines of herbivores, and, in fact, is used to make some of the strongest glues known to man. Check out the Not Milk site.

1. A person, especially a vegetarian, has to be really careful to get enough protein. There are so many facts disproving this assertion that I don't even know where to start. I'll start with the simple stuff. Cabbage, for example, is 44% protein by weight. Thus, if one were to eat only cabbage, one would get far more protein than needed (especially if one ate enough cabbage to satiate hunger and get enough calories). The only folks in the entire world who suffer from anything like "protein deficiency" are those who are literally starving to death. No one has ever gone to a hospital with symptoms of protein deficiency, except, as noted, if they had been starving themselves (which can happen without one's knowing, if one follows improper dietary guidelines). In fact, we Americans, the most obese people in the world, invariably suffer the consequences of excess protein intake (from fatty foods and other animal-protein heavy foods). I could go on and on, but I'll end with a note about a study some Swedish doctors undertook, on themselves: in an attempt to disprove the assertions which abound about the human need for protein, a group of Swedish physicians set out to walk several hundred miles over a period of at least a week. During this time, they fasted, taking in nothing at all except water. They all fared so much the better for the experiment, and found, quite tellingly, that their blood protein levels were higher at the end of their march than at the beginning.