Are Whole-Healthy-Grains Defenseless?

In a world full of animals that bite, claw, sting, envenomate and gore, it’s nice to know that there are perfectly defenseless plants for the weak at heart to hunt.  But are plants really as defenseless as they appear?  We all know that there are plenty of highly toxic plants in the world, but certainly the ones we eat aren’t poisonous.  Think again.  There have been weapons of mass destruction created from plant toxins, like ricin (used by the Soviets during the cold war), but I know of no WMD ever derived from animals.

Every single living thing on this planet has one goal in mind – to proliferate its genetics.  Nothing wants to be eaten – life has a mechanism to protect itself and its offspring.  The nice thing about animals as a food source is that their defenses typically die with them.  Whether it’s sharp teeth, powerful jaws, stingers, horns or hooves they are no longer a threat after the animal is dispatched.  Even a rattlesnake is quite edible once it is dead.  Plants have evolved a much different way to protect themselves – and especially their offspring.  Any species that does not develop a mechanism to protect its children would have certainly went extinct by now.

There is a major misconception that human beings existed mostly on plant foods with only a small amount of meat for supplement.  I guess the conventional wisdom there is based on the idea that our human ancestors were poor at hunting.  Yet, there is plenty of historical evidence of primitive hunter/gatherers hunting certain species into extinction, like the very large ruminant, Aurochs.   So our ancestors were not poor hunters – it is only because we have been shopping for our meat for so long, that we have lost many hunting and trapping skills of our ancestors.  Given the fact that better than 99.9% of all plants on this planet are poisonous to human beings, I’m not sure how this myth has stood the test of time.  I guess if something is repeated enough, people will come to believe it.

Unless the entire planet were a rainforest, it would have been impossible for humans to cover the earth as a vegetarian species.  Even many of the plants we consume today are toxic to us in their raw state, especially their offspring.  Beans, legumes and seeds of all kind are the future of the plant – they are the zygote from which more generations will spring forth.  So why would the plant leave them undefended?   They don’t.   Most seeds contain lectins, which are highly toxic to most animals.   The lectins of the castor bean are so lethal that they were used in the formation of the warfare chemical called ricin.  A dose as small as a few grains of salt is more than enough to kill an adult human.  Many weapons of mass destruction have been created using plant toxins – I know of no WMD that was ever derived from an animal.

Prior to the advent of fire and the ability to make containers to cook them in, it would have been impossible for humans to consume any quantity of beans, legumes or grains.  Heat can destroy the lectins in many plants, so humans were able to use them as a food source once cooking was available.   But heat does little to reduce the amount of phytic acid contained within the offspring of the plant.  Phytic acid binds to many minerals, such as iron, calcium, zinc and magnesium, which renders them unavailable for absorption.   These precious mineral are then carried away and excreted from the body.

Only by soaking and fermenting seeds can phytic acid be reduced.  Any predator that would gorge itself on the seeds of these plants, would soon find themselves depleted and deficient in many of these minerals, which can be quite problematic.  And few seeds are higher in phytic acid than soybeans, which is why the Asian people only consumed soy that was heavily fermented.  The massive amounts of soy inundated in all of today’s processed foods is not fermented and therefore quite counter productive to good nutrition.  Is it any wonder why osteoporosis is so prevalent in our time?   With all of the phytates within those grains, beans and legumes, the american people are crapping out their dietary calcium by the bucket, because it is bound to the phytates.  Then, their high carbohydrate diet further deplete calcium from their bones and teeth.  Because calcium is the only way the body can neutralize the high blood acidity cause by high blood sugar, if dietary calcium is not high enough, it will rob it from the bones.  Eating lots of sugar and phytic acid is a recipe for osteoporosis.  This is the standard american diet (SAD).

 Most antacid tablets for gastritis, such as Tums, contain mostly calcium because of its neutralizing properties.  Our body also uses calcium to neutralize acidic blood, which is deadly if not neutralized.  That’s why I believe that it is not the cholesterol (which is flexible) that causes hardening of the arteries, but all the calcium caught in the plaque that leads to a cardiac event.  Just like the Egyptians, the high carbohydrate blood level invites calcium into the bloodstream which gets caught in the plaque and lead to loss of arterial flexibility.  When Mann studied the Masai, who eat tons of meat and milk, he found cholesterol plaque, but they rarely suffered heart attacks, because the cholesterol was flexible (being a fat) and allowed the arteries to expand.  Mann did not find calcium deposits in their plaque, probably because of their low carbohydrate consumption, thus lower blood acidity.

The most diabolical design of these plant defenses, is that they will not kill the predator right away, especially in the absence of the lectin.  If we humans were to eat raw seed, we would become very ill or die within a short time of consuming them.  That was how our ancestor would have made the association that it was the seeds that were making them ill and avoided them as a food source.   Once we learned that heat would prevent us from getting sick right away, then the first agriculturist civilizations determined that they would be safe to eat.

But unfortunately, there are many back-up defenses evolved into the plants, which do not cause illness right away, thereby making it difficult for people to determine that it is the plant that is causing their failing health.   Now, we have such a large part of the U.S. economy structured on the proliferation of grains, making it even more difficult for anyone to make the correlation, because they are bombarded daily with advertising telling them how super-healthy these grains, beans and legumes are.   Aside from containing a butt-load of carbohydrates, grains and other seeds are a poor source of nutrition.  Human cultures that had to predominantly live on grains found ways to make them easier to digest, but the process of doing so is quite laborious and time-consuming – and in today’s times – not very profitable.

Because poor people had to exist mostly on grains, many of them, and especially their children, suffered from malnutrition.  Because of this, the U.S. government began to mandate that flour made from grains be fortified with vitamins and minerals by their manufacturers.  If grains, bean and legumes were naturally high in nutrition, then why were the poorer people, who could only afford grains, becoming sick?  And why does the government require the enrichment of cereals and flour, if they were so uber-healthy?  Grains are naturally high in only one nutrient – sugar.  Grains are not only very high in carbohydrates, but contain carbohydrates, such as amylopectin-a, which spike the blood glucose levels higher than cane or beet sugar.  Is it any wonder that diabetes has reached epidemic proportions?  The U.S. government recommends 8 to 11 servings of these blood sugar spikers per day.

During his studies, Doctor Weston A. Price found civilizations whose nutrition depended on plants and grains, because of their location and lack of good hunting.  Price found no civilization or tribe who thrived on a fully plant-based diet, absent of any animal foods, but he did find cultures that ate little animal foods and were able to thrive on a grain based diet.   But, these people went to great length to make these seeds digestible.   They were soaked, sprouted. roasted, ground and then fermented (creating sourdough) before baking them into bread or cakes.  Very few people today ferment grains or beans, because it is a time-consuming process and not very profitable to the process food manufacturers.  Even sourdough bread commercially sold are rarely fermented and have sour additives for sour flavor.  If you have ever eaten fermented sourdough bread, you would find them far more sour than any commercial bread advertised as sourdough.

It is far more likely that most of our ancestors prized meat and animal products far above plant foods for its higher nutrition and better safety from toxins, which is why we still call vegetables a side-dish to this day.  Plants were much easier to acquire, so they would have sought after meat as a first priority and simply settle for plants if meat was not readily available and if a hunt was successful, they would supplement or cook the vegetation with the meat.  But, grains were simply not a part of the paleolithic man’s diet until the technology was discovered to make them safe to eat, which only occurred about 10,000 years ago – just a fraction of the time that humans have been around.  Early grain eating societies, like the Egyptians, have recently been diagnosed with massive calcium deposits in their arteries at ages of 40 to 50 years old.  CT scans of ancient mummies has revealed dangerous levels of atherosclerosis. (source) (source) (source).  Remember, these were active people, who ate very little animal fat (usually geese) and got plenty of sunshine.  But the Egyptians loved wheat.  They made cakes, smothered in honey and were the inventors of beer from barley and consumed it as the hydration drink of choice.  Was it their love of wheat that was killing them?  I believe so.

The soybean had a much more diabolical defense to unleash on its predators.  The seed of the soy plant contains very high levels of phytoestrogens.  The purpose of these plant-based estrogen is to cause the insects that dine on them to ultimately become sterile, so the parents may feast on the seeds, but there will be a lot fewer offspring of the predator in the future.  The soybean has evolved its own birth control for those that would eat its young – after all, birth control pills are just estrogen.  These high doses of estrogen can be very problematic for humans, causing breast cancer and young women to enter puberty at a very young age and the boys will not enter puberty until a much older ages.

Peek into your pantry and read some of the processed food labels and you will be amazed how many products contain unfermented soy products.  Even most tuna fish cans will list soy as an ingredient.  If you are eating tuna to obtain more omega 3 fatty acids, they have tricked you by adding omega 6 soybean as filler. (you can get tuna without soy, but it’s a bit more expensive.).  You are probably consuming mass quantities of unfermented soy – why?  Because soy was a necessary plant used in crop rotation to replenish nitrogen into the soil, so they had to find a way to market it.  The government subsidizes farmers that grow it, so its cheap filler for all processed foods – and is making us sick.  It makes cattle and chickens sick, why does anyone believe that it is a health food?  A lot of heavy advertising and marketing brainwashing.

Fruits evolved a completely different mechanism.  The fruit is not a zygote, but actually the ovary of the plant.  The ovary is purposely designed to be high in nutrition and sweet and juicy, because the plant actually wants a predator to eat the fruit.  The seeds of the fruit are completely indigestible, so the plant willfully surrenders its delicious ovary so it will be replanted somewhere else when the predator takes a dump.  But only a fool would decide to grind up the seed of the fruit and make a bread or cake from the flour.  We know that the seeds of most fruits are highly toxic and many can kill a human in short order if made digestible and eaten in quantity.  If we all know this, then why are we convinced that the seeds of other plants are so defenseless, just waiting to be plucked, cooked and eaten?  They are not.

 If seeds are left so defenseless, I defy anyone to grind up some apricot and apple seeds, make a flour and bake it into a cookie and eat it.  It will be the last thing you will ever eat.  Apricots seeds and apple seeds  both contain hydrogen cyanide.  If swallowed, they are harmless, because we cannot digest then and they will safely pass though us.  One seed crushed may not kill you, but could make you feel ill.  Several seed ground up into a flour is certain death to those that dare to eat it.  Plants do and will defend their babies as ferociously as any mother bear would defend her cubs.

Many birds and insects have evolved mechanisms to deal with the toxins in grains.  Rodents seem to be one of the only mammals that can thrive on grains.  One thing that all of these animals have in common is a very fast metabolism – humans do not.  Any wonder why the problems with obesity in the modern world?  We are eating foods intended for animals with heart beats and metabolisms 8 to 10 times that of a human.  We cannot possibly burn the calories per hours that these animals have to.  A humming-bird must dine on pure sugar, but unless you can flap your arms at 80 times per second all day and maintain a heartbeat of 1,200 beats per minute (the human heart would explode) then you can share in their diet.  Problem is, humans are consuming the calories from sugar at the rate of a humming-bird, with our 74 beat per minute heart rate.  Hmmm.  wonder why so many are obese.

As far as plant toxins, many species of birds are known to first consume types of clay prior to eating some of these poisonous grains and berries.  Minerals in the clay can chelate to the toxins and safely remove them.  Humans have no such system yet continue to eat unfermented grains by the pound.  Doughnuts, begals, pasta, snack cakes, chips – all loaded with these anti-nutrients which rob minerals from your body.  The plants will win the battle in the long run, as all of humanity, eating 8 to 11 servings of these heavily defended offspring, playing a game of diabolical chemical warfare on your system, continue to make the human race fatter and sicker (think diabetes).

These little monsters are also reeking havoc on our digestive system, as the gluten protein wear away at your intestinal villi, shrinking them back and opening huge holes in the intestinal mucosa.  Once this happens, large proteins can be absorbed into the bloodstream and cause many autoimmune disease.   Celiacs, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis have been on the steady rising and there is no cure known for these diseases, other than cessation from grains, but few doctors will go against the zeitgeist of the huge advertising of the giant agribusiness (who own the USDA) and will continue to recommend that these IBD patients increase their grain consumption.  Every new study has proven what IBD sufferers already knew, grain fibers make their condition worse.  Though most doctors (who tend to be behind the times) still recommend insoluble fiber from grains, new studies have shown this to be counterproductive, causing gas, bloating, obstructions and bleeding in patients.  Read the testimonies here from some IBD patients talking about the horrible results they suffered when following a doctor’s advice to include indigestible psyllium from grains) into their diet.  I had similar experience with insoluble fiber as they had.

Don’t fool yourself into believing that these people are some how different or from another planet. (basically saying, “it sucks to be them”).  I consider them and me to simply be a more sensitive meter.  Similar damages are being perpetrated on your gut at a slower degradation, but it’s there.  If you do not believe me, take a scan of the gastric medicine isle at your local pharmacy or even Walmart or Target.  Look at all the different OTC medications for GERD, constipation, diarrhea, gas, enzymes for digestion (such as beano) and indigestion.  Someone must be buying this crap, or these stores would not stock so much of it.  How many times a week do you take one of these products?

 Our ancestors did not have access to such OTCs, so they had to learn to avoid or better prepare foods that caused these problems. Now people feel free to indulge in any crap they want and then pop some protonic or other digestive aid.  Is this really healthy?  The damage is still being done and you may well develop an IBD or colorectal cancer at some point.  Grain fiber WILL NOT prevent colorectal cancer as the heavy advertising from the agribusiness has brainwashed everyone – in fact, I believe it has instigated the higher numbers of cases now than we had 100 years ago.  We would have less reason to risk people’s lives with dangerous procedures, like colonoscopies, if grain eating (especially whole gain with the indigestible husks) were not the predominant food of choice.  I believe that colorectal cancer rates would dive bomb and the fear would not be so great as to scare people into risking their lives for colorectal screening (please read my post “The Dangers Of Colonoscopies”) that kills and disables so many at much younger ages than anyone would ever develop cancer.

Ruminant animals, such as cattle, get very sick and will die on a grain based diet if not given antibiotics.  It must have been brilliant marketing to convince what is supposed to be intelligent people that the same grain used to fatten cattle, which makes them sick and in need of daily antibiotic injections, would somehow make humans slim and healthy.  As should have been predicted, these grains also made humans fat and sick – any wonder why.

Dogs and cats have begun to develop many of the same diseases afflicting humans when fed a grain based diet, and most modern pet foods, made for these carnivores, is made mostly from grains.  Now it is quite common to see obesity, diabetes and even cancer in our pets.  Someone felt it was a great idea to base most of our dietary studies using rodents, which is why I pay little attention to any study which based their study on rats.  They are possibly one of the only mammals that have evolved to eat grains and are therefore a very poor analog for humans, who have not developed such a mechanism to deal with the problems offered by grains.

Historically, grains were mostly reserved for the poor as a dietary base and the poor have historically always been sick – therefore why the government mandated the addition of man-made nutrients into the cereal and flour (think agribusiness, like Monsanto, and cereal companies who give huge grants to the USDA and actually have ex-employees appointed to positions in the FDA and USDA).  If a diet rich in grains were the healthiest diet, then the impoverish people would have enjoyed the better health over the rich people who ate so much more animal fat.  This was never the case.  How have people of means, in one of the richest nations in the world, been convinced that the diet historically eaten by the poor and sickly was the diet best for the human being escapes me?  A masterful brainwashing indeed.

These grasses have not been around for millions of years by waving around naked and undefended from predators, with all that sugar available for easy food.  They evolved to reduce their predators population and unfortunately we are now the predator.  Their highly bioavailable sugars promote visceral fat, which in turn drive hormones, such as leptin (messes up the brain’s ability to determine satiation) and insulin (which drives fat to be stored), rendering the predator into a perpetual hunger needing more and more and satisfaction is never achieved.  As a result, this predator suffers obesity, diabetes; which leads to heart disease and cancer and a whole host of gastric and digestive malfunctions.

This is all driven by the billions of dollars of advertising and influence of the large agribusiness, bread and cereal companies to market their highly profitable, government subsidized, genetically engineered and patented franken-plants.  They have successfully convinced people, politicians and medical personnel that these foods, that are at the heart of most of the american health problems, are the healthiest foods that humans have evolved to eat.  How could a species evolved to thrive on such a strange food they never consumed for 99% of their existence in less than 10,000 years?

The plant’s diabolical defenses, that still remain lethal far after harvest, are winning the battle for survival.  They were here before humans and will be here long after humans are gone.  Their purpose is to reduce the population of their predator and it seems that they are on their way to achieving that goal.

If you read my post entitled,Are Humans Living Longer Than Ever Before, it explains how poor nutrition killed the impoverish en mass.  The poverty-stricken people over 100 years ago had no choice but to attempt to live on flour and sugar for calories, which were very low in available nutrients, thus succumb to malnutrition and other diseases of deficiencies, such as beriberi, rickets and even scurvy.  This was why the U.S. government mandated that all grain flour and cereal would have to be fortified or enriched with man-made vitamins.  The health of the poor did improve as a result, so it was a success, but still did not enjoy the health that those of means, who were able to eat animal foods, did.  The enriched flour is typically inundated with mostly B vitamins, because they can stand the heat of cooking, but still lack vitamin C (which is heat sensitive) and vitamin D3, the most important for human health.  These are also man-made vitamins and there are many questions as to their bioavailability, especially after being baked in excess of  350ºF and even higher temperatures when extruded to make cereal flakes and other shapes, where proteins are denatured and vitamins are destroyed.

My next rant will concern the large agribusiness and bioengineering companies, like Monsanto and where I believe that their future goals are and how they will affect us.  I hope you will return to read it.  It should be finished in a few days.  I would like to thank all my readers and especially those who have provided links to some of my articles and help spread the word on the very important information concerning colonoscopy dangers and the fact that intestinal transplants are possible and can give back life to those stuck on TPN.  Together we can make a difference, even if small, we can certainly save some lives.









Are Humans Living Longer Than Ever Before?

Humans live longer now than any time in known history.  Is this commonly recited statement true?  From a purely statistical standpoint, the answer is simple – yes.  So why do I have so many paragraphs left in this article?  Because statistics can be deceiving and without further investigation we can be led to some pretty erroneous conclusions.

Statistics are based on averages, so anyone in a population that dies extremely young (like an infant), will dramatically offset the figures of those who lived to a ripe old age.   Infant mortality rates were very high in antiquity, so when all the numbers are crunched, the average figure for a society’s mortality rate will often end up between their 40s-50s.  The modern statistical average for the United States has been reported to be 78.2 years (75.6 for males, 80.8 for females).   When you add in the rest of the world, that average drops to 66.57.  This huge drop is due to the addition of non-industrialized nations who also suffer high infant mortality rates.

Genetically, we are no different than our most ancient ancestors and they were not preprogrammed to self-destruct at the age of 40, like is so commonly believed.   I would like to address three irritating myths regarding this subject or at least the ignorant arguments I have encountered when discussing this subject.

MYTH #1

Many people seem to believe that everyone dropped dead at the age of 40 – 45 prior to the 20th century.  I have heard too many people confidently make this claim.  They heard the statistic and simply assumed that everyone prior to the 20th century would have received their AARP membership at the age of 25.  I am joking about the AARP, but if everyone assumes that people died of natural causes at the age of 45, then certainly 25 would be considered over-the-hill and time for the depends undergarments.

MYTH #2

Many people credit our modern longevity to medical advancements.  Other technologies have been a greater contributor to human longevity than medical.  Modern medicine has helped to lengthen the lives of some people, but has also prematurely cut short many lives, considering that adverse drug reactions are the leading killer of humans in the U.S. and medical errors is the third leading cause of premature death (for more details on this please read my posts under the category “Medical Mayhem” – especially “The Dangers In Modern Medicine“,  “How Common Are Medical Errors” and “The Dangers Of Colonoscopies“.).

MYTH #3

Many of these same people use this statistic to support the idea that we eat healthier now and thereby live longer.  People died younger because they ate all that animal fat.  This proves that they have not given this subject much thought or research or they would know that heart disease and cancer were very rare just 100 years ago, so how could saturated fat be the cause of premature death?

I would assume that the average american has a difficult time understanding math and statistics.  If this weren’t true, no one would buy lottery tickets or toss money down the drain at casinos.  It is true that according to statistical averages, people died much younger prior to the 20th century.  But the truth is, that their lives were taken by completely different causes than today.  It was not cancer, diabetes or heart disease that was killing most people in times past.  So what was killing them so young?  Let’s take a look at what were the major causes of death in centuries past and see why other technologies played a greater role than medicine.

Starvation and Malnutrition

Probably the single highest killer of human beings throughout history.  Due to droughts, locusts, floods, poverty and even war, food could be extremely scarce at times and millions of people died as a result.  Children are far more vulnerable to kwashiorkor.  Malnourished mothers have a higher likelihood of losing their babies, so infant mortality rates were very high among the poor as was the death of mothers giving birth (who were much younger than many mothers today).  It was advancements in agriculture, distribution methods and food preservation that made it possible to get the food from one location to the area where the disaster had struck.

Communicable Diseases and Plagues

Bubonic plague, scarlet fever, small pox and a whole host of diseases wiped out many humans and once again, hit children the hardest because of their developing immune system.  Medical advancements did less to help with this problem than did improved sanitation.  When the garbage dump is located in the middle of town and human and animal excrement runs through the city streets, disease and plagues are inevitable.  Finding a clean water supply also saved millions of lives.  People in the past often drank extremely contaminated water.  While visiting Saint Augustine, Florida recently, we noticed that many of the houses had cisterns in the basement that were filled from drainage of rain water from the roof.  This was how they obtained their drinking water and attempted to purify it by adding chalk to the water.   Many of the diseases that killed people in mass are still incurable to this day – we only prevent them by not living like pigs.

Infection

This is still one of the top killer of humans, but far, far less than before the advent of penicillin and more advanced antibiotics.  Minor infections, which can now be cleared up with a simple antibiotic before going systemic, often became lethal in the past.  Hunting and farming were both dangerous occupations that carried a high risk of injury, so many healthy people died as a result of an infection from even superficial wounds.  Antibiotics and vaccines are the one area where modern medicine has saved millions of lives – unfortunately, we are now at a point where overuse of these drugs are quickly becoming a greater threat to human health.  Hospital borne pathogens are now becoming resistant to most antibiotics.

War

It seems that the further we go back in history, the higher the death toll from war becomes.  In the ancient times of melee warfare, the idea was to simply overwhelm your enemy with sheer numbers.  If you found you were outnumbered, retreat became a suicidal option.  Armies were engaged at such a close range, that turning your back on your opponent was certain death, so casualties were very high.  These were very young men dying – much younger than today’s soldiers.

My wife and I were recently in Saint Augustine and took a tour of Fort Matanza where the Ranger informed us that the Spanish artillery soldiers started training at the age of 10, so they would be experts on the cannons by the age of 14.   These deaths were often very young men losing their life (12 – 25), which would bring down the lifespan averages quickly.

We no longer have the stomach for the same level of losses from war as our ancestors did.   Because of our ability to strike with accuracy from greater and greater distances, we suffer far fewer casualties.  In the near future, more drones will be used in warfare, so we should see the death tolls from war decrease – at least on one side.   In today’s modern warfare, the U.S. will lose less than a thousand soldiers within a year of war,  whereas in the past they could lose over a thousand soldiers in a single battle lasting only a day or two.

For example, the U.S. has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for ten years now and the U.S. death toll is around 4,486.  There were 3,108 Confederate soldiers killed in three days, on July 1 – 3, 1863 at Gettysburg.  There were over 110,000 Union soldiers killed in combat throughout the Civil War and a total of 360,000 total deaths to just Union soldiers.  These were very young men dying, so the average lifespan figures take quite a hit during periods of war.

Though modern medicine has contributed somewhat to the lower mortality rates from injury due to war, it is certainly the technology of the weapons and armor that has lessened the toll.

We can see that other technologies played a greater role in extending human lifespan than did modern medicine.  At least where our ancestor’s causes of death were concerned.  This is where this all gets rather ironic.  If we examine this subject more closely than just a simple statistic or quick sound bite that we heard, we would see a completely different set of problems between then and now.  We now NEED medical intervention just to reach the ages that our ancestors would have, if they could have adverted the problems that we have now solved (in the industrialized world).  How do I know that they would have lived as long?  Because many of them did, AND without any serious medical intervention.

In order to look at this clearly, we have to stop looking at the population as a whole and using averages to fool ourselves into the idea that we have improved our lifespan and quality of life so much more than the generations that preceded us.  In order to do this we must remove the impoverished from the equation.  Someone who lives in poverty today have a lot less problems than those of antiquity.  Here in the U.S., even the most poor among us can get access to food and medicine, something unheard of in times past.  This alone makes the average lifespan appear that everyone is living comfortably into our late seventies and eighties, while creating the illusion that everyone dropped dead at the age of forty in the past.   Many bloggers (vegans and paleo dieters) love to debate about the diet and life-span of paleolithic humans, but we have little record from that period to really make a strong argument.   For the purpose of this article, I would like to look back around 200 years ago in the United States as compared to the last couple of decades.  This way we are looking at people from similar culture and genetic backgrounds.

The argument I often hear when the fact that heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases were so rare 200 years ago, is that because they died so young, no one lived to an old enough age to succumb to today’s top killers.   That excuse is beginning to run pretty thin now that we are seeing a higher frequency of these diseases in children.  Obese and diabetic children were pretty much non-existent in the U.S. 200 years ago.  What are the differences in the common diet then and now?

COOKING OIL:  Two centuries ago, there were no processed vegetable oils, especially hydrogenated oils that mimic the properties of saturated fats (the hydrogenation process was not discovered until the beginning of the 20th century).  Everything prior to 1900 was pretty much cooked in saturated fats such as butter, lard and tallow or tropical oils like palm or coconut.  Given today’s belief, and governmental dietary recommendations, obesity and diabetes should have been rampant in children at that time with the diet being so rich in animal fat – yet it was not.   Americans consume far less animal fat than they did just 50 years ago.  Butter and lard consumption is a fraction of what it was prior to the war-on-fat started in the 1970s by the U.S. government.   Since then, margarine replaced butter and Crisco took the place of lard.  These are highly inflammatory trans fat and are used in nearly all processed foods.

SUGAR: Sugar consumption was very low in the 18th and 19th century.  The average american consumed less than 30 pounds of sugar per year, whereas the average child today can eat as much as 150 pounds of sugar per year – and this is simply calculating the refined sugar and corn syrup consumed and does not account for the higher amount of starch consumed presently (8-11 servings of starchy grains).  Modern grains have been bred to have a much higher carbohydrate content than grains from just 100 years ago.  By the time today’s children reach 50 years of age, they will have consumed over 8,750 pounds of refined sugar – that’s more than 4 tons of sugar cycled through their arteries.

MODERN WHEAT:  Today’s wheat is nothing like its ancestor.  The modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat used today in processed foods and baked goods is a genetic hybrid of its ancestors.  This wheat was not introduced into the human food supply until the 1960s and became 98% of the wheat supply by the 1980s.  Since the 1980s, there has been a quadrupling of Celiac’s Disease and many other intestinal disorders, such as Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis and other forms of IBS have been steadily on the rise.  Researchers have found many other gluten intolerant diseases in patients other than Celiac Disease and have identified certain antibodies created by many people’s immune systems with the sole purpose of attacking wheat gluten (link).  These antibodies are responsible for many other autoimmune diseases, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis (since dropping wheat from my diet, all of my joint pains slowly disappeared over the first year) .  Here is a quote from a website called The Natural Recovery Plan.com (click here to read the entire article):

The hybridisation and genetic engineering of wheat has resulted in a staggering 500 fold increase in the gluten content of modern-day wheats compared to the wheat our forefathers would have known and this may be one of the prime reasons behind the massive rise in incidence of gluten intolerance and coeliac disease in recent decades.”

If you wish to read one of the best detailed research on the history of our modern wheat and the problems that have possibly arisen from it, I highly recommend Dr. William Davis’ terrific book “Wheat Belly” and visit his site here.

These are just some of the differences in diet from the 19th to the 20th century.  Both sugar and vegetable oil (containing mostly linoleic acid) are highly inflammatory to the human body, especially the arteries.  To read my documented accounts of the damage I have seen from linoleic acid that is infused to TPN patients, please read my article, “The Truth About Soy”.   I also have a detailed article on the damage I experienced from the high sugar content infused with the TPN entitled “The Effects Of Sugar On The Arteries”.   Besides seed oils and sugar, there are many other variables to consider, such as flavor enhancers (MSG and artificial sweeteners), preservatives, coloring and let us not forget GMOs (genetically modified organisms), such as “Round Up Ready Seeds” by Monsanto.  (I will be covering this in an upcoming article).

It is not inevitable that our ancestors would have suffered the same fates as our seniors today had they lived longer.  To be fair, I decided to look at a very small group of men who would have lived similar lifestyles.  Let’s take a look at U.S. Presidents and you may find it quite surprising.  If we look at the first 5 presidents, we will see that they all lived well beyond the age that those diseases should have showed up in one or more of them.

George Washington – 67

John Adams – 90

Thomas Jefferson – 83

James Madison – 73

James Monroe – 80

I wonder why these men didn’t drop dead at 40?   John Adams was 61 years old when he was inaugurated.   Why would the people vote in a president who was already past the average life-span of a human?    Because these were men of means, they were able to avert all of the other problems that killed poorer people in huge numbers.  Starvation, poor sanitation and infections were less of a threat to someone above the poverty level (safer occupations), so these men lived to ripe old ages.  George Washington is the youngest death in this list, but he did not die of natural causes.  Washington was bled to death by his doctor (medical errors were killing people prematurely even then).  Had he not been bled to death, he still may well have died anyway, because he had a respiratory infection and this was a time before antibiotics.  Even so, he still lived to the age of 67 (my father had his first heart attack at the age of 66 and without the use of stents, it would have been a fatal heart attack).  Let’s take a look at the last 5 presidents  (excluding Obama, because he is still too young to know his fate).

Jimmy Carter – Still living at 88

Ronald Reagan – 93

George H. W. Bush – Still living at 88

Bill Clinton – Still living at 66

George W. Bush – Still living at 66

Ronald Reagan is the only one who has passed on – and he was 93 at the time.  So why would I list these last 5 when the only one that died was older than any of the first 5 presidents and the rest are still alive, even beyond the average age of death?  Because I wanted to take a more detailed look to determine if all of these men would still be alive had they not had the modern medicine and procedures we have today.  The bigger question that we have to ask ourselves is how in the hell did the first 5 presidents live to those ages without medical intervention – especially with all that animal fat they ate daily?  Remember, even a ruptured appendix or gall bladder would have taken their life at that time.  Certainly with modern antibiotics, George Washington would have survived the influenza and may well have lived as long as John Adams or possibly longer.

Ronald Reagan did live to the age of 93, but also had a serious tumor surgically removed from his colon in 1985 – without treatment he may have died many years earlier.  Reagan also suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for at least the last decade of his life and many believe he began suffering signs of the disease even while serving as President.  Without medical intervention, he certainly would have died at a much younger age.  There is no record that Adams was not of sound mind (John Adam’s health history).  Most all of the founders were very active even late into their lives.  George H. W. Bush now suffers from vascular Parkinsonism and is confined to a wheelchair, John Adams was not in a wheelchair at 88.   Bush Sr. also underwent a procedure to reduce his thyroid gland (radioactive iodine), because he suffered with Graves disease (the doctors overdosed him, destroying too much of the gland.  Since then his life has been dependent on hormone medications).  Adams also suffered hyperthyroidism, but his went untreated.

Bill Clinton is still with us, but clearly would not be without modern medicine.  Clinton began having cardiovascular health problems at the age of 48 and underwent a coronary bypass surgery at the age of 58.  It would be safe to say that Bill Clinton would have most likely never seen the age of 60 without modern medicine.

George W. Bush had precancerous skin lesions removed from his skin a few times.  Of course we are told this was caused by that enemy-in-the-sky we call the sun – which was strictly put there to kill us.   Could Bush have actually had more sun exposure than Andrew Jackson, who led his troops throughout subtropical states like Louisiana and Florida?   “W” has had access to sunscreen his entire life, Jackson did not and lived to the ripe old age of 78 with a lead bullet imbedded in his chest from a duel he had while in his forties (Jackson’s health record).  Bush could have died from cancer far before the age of 65 – and he didn’t have a bullet stuck in his chest for more than 30 years.  Jackson had no access to sunscreen while in the hot Florida sun.  Sunscreen could likely contribute to the high number of melanomas seen today, but it’s extremely profitable to the manufacturers (I’ll save that for another rant).

Many people today would never see their 60th birthday without some sort of medical intervention.  So even though we solved all of the killers that plagued our ancestors, we found a way to level the playing field by creating a whole new set of killers.  Though we have invented medications, treatment and procedures for many of them, they hardly improve on the quality of life.  We may live longer, statistically, but we live sickly, racked with pain and dependent on medications starting at middle age.  If we could improve our lifestyle and eat real food, like our ancestors, we could possibly live longer and with more vitality than ever before in history.  Had our ancestors eaten the crap we do, without our modern medicine, their lifespans would have been much shorter and we may not have even survived as a race.

Modern technology has given us toxic food, but plenty of medications, surgeries and other medical procedures to keep us breathing well into our decrepit eighties. Unfortunately, the party is about to be over.  The medicine is not improving at the same rate that our diet and lifestyle is decaying.  We are beginning to see a shortening of the average lifespan that I believe will continue if something drastic is not done to fix the standard american diet (SAD).  I will continue with more evidence on this is an upcoming post.  I apologize for not posting anything in a while.  I actually have dozens of drafts written that I simply haven’t had time to proof read and edit, so the next several articles should follow very shortly.  Thank you for your patience.