By Paul M. Otten, Editor
A good number of years back I had the privilege of meeting Howard Lyman, the author of Mad Cowboy. Howard had been a large scale cattle rancher turned vegetarian. You may remember him best from his appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show that resulted in a huge lawsuit from the Texas Cattleman Association. (The association eventually lost the case.)
One of the most significant statements Mr. Lyman made to the St. Paul-Minneapolis audience the night I met him, was
“The fork is the most dangerous weapon in the arsenal of homo sapiens. We are killing more people with the fork than any other tool.”
We live in a culture that is so used to lying and being lied to, it almost seems natural. Though perjury (lying under oath) is a crime and punishable under law if you get caught and are convicted, lying without an oath has become “honorable” and well-compensated in numerous professions.
Practical no one expects that politicians speak the truth.
Few people expect that advertising messages speak the truth.
We used to jest about the proverbial car salesman. The disease is so widely spread among telemarketers that they often start their message with “I am not trying to sell you anything!”
How many pill-takers honestly expect that the pharmaceutical drugs their doctor prescribed will really heal them?
Few expect the labels on processed foods to tell the truth on face value. We EXPECT to be lied to and literally have to read the fine print that is often intentionally so worded as to purposefully give the wrong message.
Who, for example, expects that a bottle of “100% juice” with the big words RASPBERRY or CRANBERRY on it will actually be raspberry or cranberry juice? In all likelihood it is going to be cheap grape juice, pear puree, and/or reconstituted apple juice with only a small percentage of raspberry or cranberry juice in it.
The enchanting Hollywood stars dancing all over the TV screen to promote this or that prescription drug, NEVER bothers to read the long list of fine print warning required by the FDA to accompany each prescription – warnings which may include the “side effect” of death. We EXPECT to be lied to.
Was is not the brutal communist dictator, Stalin, who once said that to sway the ignorant public you must first invent a lie, then make it big, repeat it often, and most people will eventually believe you. Isn’t that, for all intents and purposes, what the advertising industry and the public relations moguls are actually accomplish by hiding the truth, putting a beautiful slant on a small part of the picture, placing unwarranted emphasis on an insignificant aspect that distorts the whole picture… all to make you part with your money and buy into their scheme of things?
The most basic value in any kind of lasting relationship is truthfulness. Without it there can be no well-placed trust. Without it there can be no justice. Without it there can be no lasting marriages or any deep and lasting relationship, or a functional society. Yet, we lack truthfulness in two huge area of our life that includes our most basic needs: food and healthcare.
“I’ll go out on the limb and boldly declare that one of the chief causes of our health crisis is highly processed food.”
Let’s take a quick overview of the broad topic of food. I’ll go out on the limb and boldly declare that one of the chief causes of our health crisis is highly processed food. When the modern grain mills were invented in the 19th century, the process of removing much of the nutritional value of wheat and other grains was called REFINING. Lie! BIG FAT LIE! Damning and killing lie! When you relieve persons of most of their valuable possessions, are you “refining” or robbing them? When you relieve grain of its precious germ, and fiber, and a multitude of other nutrients, are you “refining” them, or are you robbing a basic food of key ingredients that belong to health and the absence of which causes degenerative diseases? When wholesome whole brown rice is “polished” and turned into white rice, you’re left mostly with starch (carbohydrates) with much of the minerals and vitamins and fiber removed. When you “refine” cane juice or sugar beet juice and remove what we call blackstrap molasses, you end up with “refined” white sugar, all the nutrients except sugar (carbohydrate) removed, resulting in pure, empty calories, without any other nutritional value. You’ve taken a wholesome, natural product and turned it into a immune system suppressant, fattening sweet substance that can and does kill people… ever so slowly, ever so sweetly. We could go on with high fructose corn syrup… and on… and on.
You get the point. Our native Americans put their finger on it a few centuries back when they came to the conclusion that “White man speaks with forked tongue!” We must return to NOT speak with forked tongue, double meaning words designed to deceive and causes others to buy a package of something that actually does something other for them than what the message or label ostensibly promotes.
I am convinced that if our politicians would speak the truth, many would be booted out of office while others would be honestly and rightly elected.
I am convinced that if the farm chemical giants would tell the unvarnished truth, rather than hide it as Philip Morris did with tobaccoabout the health effects of applicators, water pollution – who, 50 years ago, would have in their worst nightmares imagined that within two generations Americans would spend billions to filter their drinking water and even more billions to buy bottled water because their ordinary water is so polluted with chemicals as to be dangerous to their health – their would be a much stronger demand for naturally grown food and liability law suits of all kinds to hold the pollution perpetrators nose to the grindstone and make them clean up the messes they have created.
I am convinced if the grain mills and thousands of other food processors told the truth about their products,people would by and large return to buying and consuming REAL food – whole food that nourished the body and sustains health rather than promotes degeneration. (NO, I don’t think we can live here for ever, but why accelerate the degeneration process?)
I am convinced if the pharmaceutical companies – ALL of them, no matter how glaringly they suggest all they are after is your health and wellbeing – would honestly and truthfully promote their patented drugs, the usage would drop dramatically, thousands of lives would be saved, hundreds of thousands ER visits would be uncessary, and those who really needed some of these drugs might actually benefit… our healthcase system would become healthier and our population would be directed towards health instead of maintenance of degeneration.
I am convinced if we’d call our screwed up system, “disease-care” or “degeneration management” – for hat’s what our “healthcare system” is mostly focused on – it would open the eyes of some and begin to arouse questions abou the direction in which we are going.
I am also convinced that the answers do not lie in politically or legislatively “correcting” a dysfunctional system,but rather in individual persons educating themselves, taking responsibility for their own food and lifestyle choice – for their health – in so far as we have choices to make that affect our health.
You, today, are made up about 99.99% of what your chose to place past your lips and into your body. All your nearly 100 trillion cells are made up of the molecules you consumed in the form of “food” or “drink”, in addition to the ones you breathed in and some what were unintentionally rubbed on and absorbed through your skin. So, we don’t have complete control of what we breathe in, or even what rubs up against us. And YES, these can and do affect us. We can do little about them. If the air is too polluted where you live or work, moving may not be a easy solution. However, food choices we all have, not matter our poor or well off, hether we live in the inner city our country, in the ghetto or in a mansion. Yes, the choices are harder when you are poorer. Yet, I often observe that the “poorer” shoppers purchase and consume the very non-nourishing “food” and “drink” products that are unable to sustain their health – lots of pop, chips, and highly refined products; few fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.
Phytochemicals
“The power of phytochemicals to promote good health and control cancer is so impressive that the University of Illinois has created a whole new department with 63 scientists and professors to specialize in phytochemical research!” (Tahitan Noni – Scientific Studies, p. 1 doc. From LDO to PMO 11/01/00 from Dr. Constance Tracy Tayler, 619-435-5572 – http://209.180.175.75/science.htm)
Fruits & Vegetables
“The message from every research laboratory in the world is clear – eat your vegetables – an absolute minimum of five half cup servings per day. Fruits and vegetables contain a variety of fibers as well as phytochemicals which are known to prevent a number of illnesses, including cancer.
“And, the nutritionists and biochemists are telling us that whole grains should be the mainstay of any healthy diet whether it is designed for heart disease or to prevent cancer…
“Whole grains include brown rice, wheat berries, barley, oats, rye, and a number of delicious grains like millet, quinoa, amaranth and tell.” (Oral Chelation – The Bright Hope for Health by Alternative Medical Publishing, Inc. – p. 75)
The Nutrient Team: Nutrients work synergistically as a team (choir, orchestra) – Solution: Whole Foods
“We know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nutrients network. The action of one depends upon the presence of others. Many, like vitamins E and selenium, are ambogenic, which means simply that a deficiency of either one of them cannot be corrected without the other. Just as the ‘leg bone is connected to the hip bone,’ vitamin E is connected to selenium, vitamin A is connected to zinc, zinc is connected to calcium, and calcium is connected to vitamin C, and so on ad infinitum. The best solution is a balanced intake of the basic nutrients with the additions of others – or an increase in some – as the condition warrants.” (Oral Chelation – The Bright Hope for Health by Alternative Medical Publishing, Inc. – p. 65)
Sherry Rogers, M.D.: “We are the first generation to eat processed foods, which have 25-75% of the nutrients removed. We are also the first generation to have to detoxify hundreds of chemical in our air, food, and water each day. This uses up nutrients at a faster rate than ever. So we have two major unprecedented conditions that make us the most nutrient-depleted generation ever. And nutrient deficiencies set the state for all diseases.” (Atoning for the Biochemical Sins of the 21st Century” in Wellness Against All Odds, by Sherry Rogers, M.D.)