In case you haven’t noticed, or this is the first OLM article you’ve read this month, this issue is primarily about studies. Many people rely on studies to tell them what they should and shouldn’t eat, drink, smoke, and purchase. People aren’t in tune with their bodies. People aren’t listening. They seem to have lost their common sense.

Do you need a study to tell you that it’s not good for you to drink a whole bottle of wine? Hopefully not. What about one glass? If you truly listen to your body, you’ll know if and how much that glass affected you. The signs are usually subtle, but they are there. We’ve spent so long ignoring our bodies that we are dependent on “experts” to tell us what we should already know—just by paying attention.

The following pages take a look at the studies involving milk, chocolate, red wine, and coffee, four foods the media now tells us are health foods. We, at OLM, do not consider them to be healthy, though our editor-in-chief admits he’s a “chocoholic,” and he also enjoys a glass of red wine every now and then.

The proceeding articles were not written to “convince” you to give up chocolate, milk, alcohol, or coffee. That’s up to you. We’re just looking at the so-called “expert studies” in a discerning manner and stating our opinions. Your opinion is your own, but we hope you will see the fallacy in relying on “experts” and their studies to tell you how to live.

For the purposes of this article, unless otherwise stated, when we say milk we mean pasteurized, homogenized, conventional cow’s milk.

While I have yet to see an actual study that proves milk is good for you, there are countless studies out there that state that calcium is good for you and you can get it by drinking milk. This is true. Statements such as this sum it up perfectly: “Indeed, it is impossible in a diet based on conventional foods to obtain adequate intakes of calcium if milk and dairy products are not consumed.”1

They’re correct. But consider a conventional diet: microwaved dinners, cereal, and frozen vegetables at best. Maybe a salad made with pre-packaged iceberg lettuce, a few pieces of romaine lettuce, some shredded carrots and Hidden Valley ranch salad dressing when it’s supper time. With the soda most Americans drink, which leaches minerals including calcium from the body in order to keep the blood’s PH at 7.4, it’s no wonder milk can do a body good. So does this mean milk is good for you?

Most alternative health care practitioners and a growing number of conventional doctors say “no”. They know milk is a major source of allergen in people, especially children. Okay, so maybe a more realistic statement would be, “Milk is good for you, unless you are one of the millions who are allergic or intolerant.” On the other hand, milk allergy or not, on the holistic side of health, it’s not uncommon to have relief from other allergies when one stops consuming milk. In fact, most alternative health care practitioners will tell you before you do anything else, “Stop consuming dairy and refined sugars!”

There are so many studies. Some say milk may make you fat2, while others claim milk helps you lose weight. Some studies state that milk can help prevent heart disease3 while others claim the opposite is true4.

Many people advocate drinking raw milk, which is unpasteurized and non-homogenized. We at OLM are not fans of pasteurization or homogenization at all. And milk does contain a wide variety of vitamins and minerals and very easily assimilable protein. Some argue that it is not at all easy for humans to absorb the calcium from cow’s milk, but others say that you can if it’s raw.

So what’s our take on the milk issue? Cows have four stomachs. Humans have one. Raw cow’s milk from a healthy cow is a much better choice than the homogenized and pasteurized varieties, but there is still some minor risk of food poisoning (though if the cow and the human ingesting the milk are healthy, the risk is extremely low). This is what confuses many. “Healthy” and “Safe” are not the same things. Raw milk, provided it is not tainted with e-coli, is healthier than pasteurized milk. But the pasteurization of milk does make it safer to consume. For health, raw sheep’s milk is a better choice, and raw human milk is the best. Isn’t it silly that the idea of human milk is disgusting to many people, yet cow’s milk is the norm? Come on, guys, would you rather suck on a cow’s udder, or… Well, you know.

So how do you get enough calcium? You may have heard us say this before: At least 80% of your diet should be raw fresh fruits and vegetables, mostly vegetables. And if you want to get more vitamin D, we recommend sunlight.

• Claims of Conventional Milk Health Risks Unjustified
• Milk, dairy fat, dietary calcium, and weight gain: a longitudinal study of adolescents
• Research: Milk drinkers may live longer lives
• Research on milk protein/heart disease link causes dispute

If you are an animal lover, there is also the animal cruelty issue to consider when evaluating milk as a part of your diet. The intensive dairy practices for milking cows for any type of milk significantly reduce the animal’s lifespan. If you’re considering giving up cow’s milk all together and need a little extra push, check out the video on the right and this website for some more information.

Organic or not, a dairy cow’s life is not a pretty picture.

Editor’s Note:

As a child I was sick regularly. I had many allergies and other health issues. Eliminating milk made a huge difference in my quality of life. The last time I drank a glass of milk, years ago, it immediately made me feel terrible.

Ten to twelve thousand years ago, fertile ground led to the rise of our first civilizations as mankind began the slow shift from full dependence on hunting and gathering food to planting and growing crops.  Seed was saved and sowed from year to year. Wild plants become domesticated. We learned to irrigate fields, to maximize production, to feed nations.

• Click here to read part I
• Click here to read part II
• Click here to read part IV

In time, we learned to use selective breeding. Selective breeding produced desired traits such as taste, size, drought resistance, and yields. Experience brought us wisdom. We learned the benefits of crop rotation. Knowing rich soil grew healthy, disease resistant crops, we found natural ways to replenish the land.

But famine has always plagued mankind. Famine is caused by many factors—war; over-population; climate shifts including drought, over abundant rainfall, temperature shifts, decreased sunlight; and so on. Though many would argue we have enough food to feed the world, famines continue. A quick look at the history of famine, and the famine conditions that exist today, explains much about the search for solutions.

Beginning in the 1940s, the agricultural technology of industrialized nations – utilizing fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation techniques, and high yield cultivars (new varieties of

grains developed through selective breeding) – was brought to developing nations. Dubbed the “Green Revolution”, these projects created remarkable increases in yields but they also changed the face of traditional farming.

Indian Farmer Suicides

Search anywhere on the net, and you will find story after story blaming Monsanto for alarming suicide rates among poor rural farmers—200,000 or more farmers in India since 1997. The stories claim poor farmers incur debt to purchase Monsanto seeds at 1000 times the conventional price, believing Monsanto’s exorbitant claims that GMO seeds will require little to no pesticide and yield abundant crops, bounties never before seen. These stories also claim GMO seeds require twice the amount of water as conventional seeds.  Sold in areas of persistent drought, the crops fail. Farmers, with land now indebted to pay for their inputs of seed, fertilizer, and pesticide, are committing suicide by the thousands, many of them by drinking Monsanto insecticide before they lie down in their fields to die an agonizing death.

Brad Mitchell, Monsanto’s Director of Public Affairs, denies the claim that their seeds are priced at 1000 times the cost of conventional seeds, but admits their cost is higher. “Monsanto’s seeds are based on value,” he says, directing us to information on the company website that explains higher yields and lower inputs justify a higher price tag on GMO seeds.  Mitchell also denies the claim that Bt cotton seeds require more water.

Monsanto’s website states, “Bt cotton has been given an unfair reputation when the true culprit is a smorgasbord of repairable socio-economic problems in India. A variety of third-party studies have proven that personal debt is the historical reason behind an Indian farmer’s decision to commit suicide, notbiotech seed. Think about it this way: if Bt cotton were the root cause of suicidal tendencies, then why is it that Indian farmers represent the fastest-growing users of biotech crops in the world? Between 2005 and 2006, India’s adoption of Bt cotton nearly tripled to 9.5 million acres! Today, Bt cotton is currently used in nine states in India on 14.4 million or 63 percent of India’s total cotton acres. So, if the studies don’t disprove the myths relating Bt cotton to Indian farmer suicide, then perhaps the sales figures will.” ¹

Brad Mitchell encouraged us to read an independent study by The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Bt Cotton

and Farmer Suicides in India, Reviewing The Evidence.

The study reaches the conclusion that on a national level there is no “resurgence” of farmer suicide and no correlation to Bt cotton and farmer suicide rates. Overall, national cotton production “appears” to have a positive correlation to Bt cotton; pesticide use is down.

The study reports farmer suicides at the rate of 14,000 to 18,000 per year representing 14-16 percent of India’s total suicides, since 1997. It concludes, “Based on the observed national trend from 1997 to 2006, one can clearly reject the assertion that the growth in suicides has accelerated in the last five years or so. The number of farmer suicides is significant and tends to be growing over time, but so is the total number of suicides in the general population…” They also state, “Yes, farmer suicide is an important and tragic phenomenon, but it still only represents three-quarters of the total number of suicides due to pesticide ingestion in India and less than a fifth of total suicides in India. Moreover, even if there has been an increasing trend in total suicides, the reported share of farmer suicides has in fact been decreasing. Of course, all these conclusions are based on available estimates, which may be underestimated, but without better data, onecannot deny that claim.”

The study also reveals that national trends and regional trends on suicide differ as do reports of success with Bt cotton.  At the time of the International Food Policy Research Institute report, Bt cotton was cultivated in more than 10 states across India. Bt seed sold at prices up to 400% higher than conventional seed (down from its original price of 500 times the price of conventional seed), and it promised higher yields with fewer inputs (less need to spray with pesticide). “…Bt cotton is a costly technology compared with non-Bt cotton because of the highly priced seeds. At the same time, some farmers seem to have spent significant amounts on other inputs (fertilizers and so forth) with the planting of Bt cotton, based on the belief that this new technology would result in an extraordinary level of yields in all conditions (even with drought) or on the false perception that high pesticide use was still required. Other farmers seem to have purchased high-cost spurious seeds, thinking the seeds were Bt seeds, but they were duped. Lastly, and more generally, a number of farmers bought Bt seeds without considering the type of Bt variety they were purchasing; therefore they blamed the Bt technology itself, when actually the variety they purchased was inadequate for their  conditions.” ²

India’s first Bt cotton was illegally planted.  The seed company held responsible, Navbharat, claimed they collected seed from a number of fields to produce a new hybrid seed, not knowing the seed carried Bt genes. Whether Navbharat told the truth and Monsanto’s seeds were already sown across the countryside or the company was lying and knowingly sold Bt cotton seeds to farmers, the fact remains that Monsanto’s Bt cotton entered India illegally, bypassing safety testing protocols and endangering non-GMO crops with contamination. At roughly the same time, a Monsanto subsidiary in Indonesia bribed an Indonesian official to repeal or modify a law that prevented the introduction of Bt cotton without a legally required environmental impact study.

Indian cotton farmers have “adopted the methods at higher rates than anywhere else on the planet with any other technology ever introduced into agriculture,” says Brad Mitchell.

Monsanto is certainly perpetuating the second wave of the “Green Revolution” model which began in the last century, a movement that encourages farmers to adopt non-sustainable agriculture and results in a dependence on companies such as Monsanto for seed and other inputs. More >and more small Indian farmers have moved into non-sustainable cash crop farming, planting one crop instead of many, and relying on that one cash crop to make a profit that will pay for all the family’s needs. As a result, small rural farms in India are on the decline, an all too familiar scenario.

Seed Monopoly

Monsanto, now the largest seed company in the world, has bought out many seed companies across the nation. Critics are crying foul, with fears that Monsanto is gaining a monopoly on the world’s seed supply. Brad Mitchell says, “At present, if we dominate—if you want to use the word dominate – we dominate through innovative not through unfair business practices. People buy our product because they like it, and because they find value in it, not because they have to. I ask every farmer I meet, ‘Do you have choices?’ and he’ll say. ‘Hell yes.’ So that’s out there. I’ve been looking for statistics on this, but my understanding, and I can’t cite it, but the best understanding I can come up with from personal sources is that about 80% of the world’s seed remain open source; that they’re not patented, they’re not hybrid.”

Anti-GMO critics aren’t the only sources concerned that Monsanto now holds a monopoly on the seed supply. Monsanto’s GMO competitor, DuPont, has gone public with the same concerns about a monopoly, though DuPont’s concern is a monopoly within the bio-tech seed industry. ³

Monsanto’s latest seed company acquisitions to make the headlines are two of the largest seed companies in the world. While purchasing an overseas company is not addressed under U.S. anti-trust laws, the greater concern now becomes global dominance.

On March  31, 2008, Monsanto announced its agreement to acquire DeRuiter Seeds, a Dutch company, one of the world’s leading vegetable seed companies. This action followed the acquisition of Seminis in 2007 for 1.4 billion in cash plus assumed debt. Seminis was the world’s largest seed company. Monsanto’s news release stated, “Seminis is the global leader in the vegetable and fruit seed industry and their brands are among the most recognized in the vegetable-and-fruit segment of agriculture. Seminis supplies more than 3,500 seed varieties to commercial fruit and vegetable growers, dealers, distributors and wholesalers in more than 150 countries around the world.” The Organic Seed Alliance reports Seminis controlled 40% of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 % of the world market. ⁵

Again, we asked Mr. Mitchell for clarification on the monopoly issue, this time in writing. “What percentage of the world’s marketable seeds is owned by Monsanto (not counting seeds saved by farmers from their own crops)?”

He responded, “Monsanto’s share of the total worldwide seed market is very small. Of the global seed market, it is estimated that greater than 80 percent is ‘open source’ farmer saved seed. So, the commercial seed market is less than 20 percent and Monsanto’s is a fraction of that 20 percent.”

That “fraction” equals 23% of the global proprietary seed market. In 2007, their sales totaled $4,964 million dollars.5

Monsanto is wildly criticized for the fact that farmers are not allowed to save seeds for the next crop. Farmers who purchase GMO seeds enter a contract, fully aware that they will have to buy new seed next season.  Yet critics abound, saying this goes against nature, that farmers have always saved seed.

Brad Mitchell reminds us that this is not always true. “You can’t save hybrids. I’m a little perplexed, frankly, by this whole thing about not being able to save seeds, because it’s nothing new. Beyond that, I guess I look out in the marketplace and I’m a home gardener and I have friends who are organic farmers. I’ve yet to hear one of them who can’t get the heirloom seeds they want.  I look at catalogs like Johnny Seeds and it doesn’t look to me like all those seed varieties are going away. In fact it seems like Johnny Seeds is growing every year. So I don’t see the evidence of us losing these open source varieties of seed.”

Mr. Mitchell tells us farmers would never save and plant hybrid seeds for a second season as they don’t do well for second generation planting—the farmer doesn’t know what he’s getting.

Hybrid seed is not new to India. The traditional relationship between the famer and his seeds has already been disrupted by the “Green Revolution” and the acceptance of hybrid seeds.

The abundance first realized through petroleum-based fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides has taken its toll on the land itself.  “The foundation of all agricultural production is quality soil,” says K. Rashid Nuri, of Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farms. “Conventional agriculture uses soil as simply a receptacle for the roots, and then attempts to add chemical nutrients that plant and soil scientists feel are necessary. These chemicals actually degrade and pollute the environment and do not provide or create life-giving food.”

Lessons we have learned over thousands of years of agriculture are being ignored. Short term gains are realized at the expense of long-term results. It is only through honoring the land itself that we will reap benefits in the long run.

“Farmers who understand agricultural practices holistically,” says Nuri, “realize that all life begins and ends in the soil. Thus, the proper agricultural focus is on building quality soil through application and incorporation of copious amounts of compost and other organic materials. This material feeds the soil and the life found in it. Plants grown in healthy soil that is full of earthworms, fungi and other micro-flora and fauna create an environment that produces healthy, disease resistant plants full of vital nutrients requisite to human health.”

Isn’t it high time we support traditional farming?

Monsanto Part IV (click to read) addresses RoundUp safety and GMOs in Europe as well as other safety issues regarding GMOs

Recommended Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Monsanto part I
• Monsanto part II
• Monsanto part IV

Sources:

1. Monsanto’s website
2. Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India, Reviewing The Evidence. 
3. Monsanto, DuPont Square Off in Crop Seed Turf War, Reuters
4. And We Have Seeds, Organic Seed Alliance, January 24, 2005
5. Etc Group, Who Owns Nature? Nov 2008

• 2 cups sugar snap or snow peas
• ¼ cup dried coconut flakes
• 2 tbsp minced shallots
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp coconut butter (High Grade)
• 1 tsp cardamom
• ¼ tsp sea salt

Toss together and let marinate for 2 hrs.

All ingredients should be organic when ever possible!

First, pat mushrooms caps with a dash of raw soy sauce and pumpkin seed or sesame oil. Set aside and let marinate for a couple of hours.

Stuffed Shitake Filling

Blend in a food processor:

• 1 cup pine nuts
• ½ cup tarragon
• ½ tsp sea salt

To serve:

1. Fill each mushroom cap with a spoon of Pine
2. Nut Filling and top with a thin slice of fresh ripe
3. mango, 2 small strips of scallion and a sliver of jalapeno pepper.

All ingredients should be organic when ever possible!

Restricted Calorie Diet

How many times did your mother tell you to eat up because kids living in a place you weren’t going to visit anyway were starving? How many times did you respond by saying, “Why don’t you send this plate to Ethiopia?” Believe it or not, the child’s wish to not eat is sometimes more nutritionally appropriate than the mother’s position.

According to the results of a long-term rhesus monkey study from Wisconsin, modest reductions in daily calories can help primates live longer and healthier. The monkeys were divided into normal and reduced calorie diet groups. Apparently, 37 percent of the monkeys in the regular group died of age-related conditions as opposed to 13 percent of the dieting group. The research is not over, but there is an indication that a very healthy diet of fewer calories might add years to your life.

The researchers reduced the dieting monkeys’ calorie intake by 30 percent, but took steps to make sure that all necessary nutrients were still consumed. The calorie-cut monkeys didn’t just live longer; they had approximately half the heart disease and cancerous tumors of the non-dieting group. Additionally, the rates of diabetes and brain atrophy, conditions associated with aging, were greatly reduced in the dieting group.1

We, at Nancy Appleton Books, applaud this research with both cheers and a “We told you so.” We have commented on food intake and other aspects of our diet making us fat, especially in our recent book Suicide by Sugar.

A sedentary lifestyle, going from bed to work in front of a screen to entertainment in front of another screen and back to bed, leads to lack of exercise and overeating. Too often, people living this lifestyle eat processed foods that are high in sugars, especially fructose. Fructose triggers hunger2 which feeds a vicious cycle of eating more and more, making people fat and unhealthy. Our position has always been to cut back on sugar and preservatives in favor of whole foods, which represents the kind of caloric reductions mentioned in the Wisconsin monkey study.

What the average person reading this article needs to know before applying a 30 percent daily calorie reduction to his or her diet is what is in the monkey chow normally fed to the primates in captivity. Rhesus monkeys in the wild eat insects, fruit, worms, leaves and roots, usually after exerting some energy to get the food. We have it directly from the Wisconsin researchers that the “animals ate a semi-purified, well-defined pelleted diet consisting of 15 percent protein (lactalbumin), 10 percent fat (corn oil) that also contains sucrose, corn starch, dextrin, cellulose and a vitamin and mineral mix. In addition, each animal receives a piece of fresh fruit (~100 kcal) daily.”

At this point, we need to refer the reader to experiments conducted on cats by Francis Pottenger Jr., MD, between the 1930s and 1980s that show how the modern processed diet is in and of itself a cause for alarm.

Pottenger’s cats were given a diet of raw milk, cod liver, and either raw or cooked meat. The cooked meat cats showed generations of abnormalities that, left alone, killed off the cat breeding after three generations and took four generations of a proper diet to heal in the cat offspring.3 While it is true that subsequent replication studies suggest a taurine deficiency more than cooking as the cause of the symptoms shown by Pottenger’s cats, which included heart disease, bad vision, lack of balance, and wild variations in birth weight, there is some link between our diet and the symptoms we feel.4

Pottenger’s cats apply to the monkey study in this way: the standard captive monkey diet already has a lot of fat, heart disease and other ailments built in. Making a 30 percent cut in this non-whole foods diet will help because a lot of sugar is being cut out and every little bit helps. More research is obviously needed to see if monkeys and humans would benefit as much from calorie reduction when they go on a diet of more whole foods than not, or if these primate studies just tell us to cut the sugar, excess carbohydrates, preservatives, and other time bombs in our diet to achieve the same effect.

Another minor issue in applying the monkey study to our diet is the distressing fact that portion sizes in human meals keepincreasing. Some food items, like chocolate chip cookies, increased 700 percent between 1982 and 2002.5 We need to find out which year to use in setting an appropriate base meal size, because while any reduction from a high-calorie diet is an improvement, it represents a false hope if the underlying average meal size continues to grow.

However, while there are holes left to fill concerning sugar and carbohydrates, the first bit of research on overeating and longevity is in. Eating a little less without depriving yourself of nutrients will go a long way to extending your life and making you healthier. But there are no magic pills for your health, says Dr. David Finkelstein of the National Institute of Aging, a funding source for the Wisconsin study.

“Watch what you eat, keep your mind active, exercise and don’t get hit by a car,” Finkelstein says.

Sources:

1. Coleman, RJ, Et. Al. “Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys” Science 325;(5937): 201-204
2. Tannous, dit El Khoury D. et. al. “Variations in Postprandial Ghrelin Status Following Ingestion of High-Carbohydrate, High-Fat and High-Protein Meals in Males.” Annals of

Slightly overweight…

After reading the previous article about reduced caloric intake being the only thing proven to increase one’s lifespan, you may be thinking that it’s time to shed some pounds. Not so fast (pun intended).

Two studies, one done in Portland and the other in Canada say that slightly overweight people live longer than underweight and very overweight people. The people considered overweight but not obese, with a body mass index of 25-29.9, were actually less likely to die than people of normal weight, defined as having a B.M.I. of 18.5 to 24.9.

We are not suggesting that our readers start “bulking up”. No matter what any study tells us, our suggestion to eat a healthy diet of at least 80% fresh raw fruits and vegetables is unwavering.

Sources:

• Slightly overweight people live longer than normal-weight people
• Overweight People Live Longer