Is it Really a Healthy Diet?

by Le Anne Amber

You see the advertisements in magazines. You see the commercials on TV. Probably your doctor is telling you the same thing. “Eat more soy and less meat.” After all, everyone knows that eating meat is bad for you, right? It raises your cholesterol and leaves residue in your bowels and increases your risk for heart disease and cancer. But is that right? Or is it simply “marketing”?

Let’s talk about the meat issue first, then I’ll tell you some things about soy products that you might never have heard. Meat is not bad for you. It’s actually good for you and you need the protein in meat in order for your body to function properly. The only bad part about meat is the fat. When you buy meat at the store (beef, chicken, or pork), it’s been raised for the express purpose of making the meat producer and distributors a healthy profit. In order to make a profit, he has to raise his meat at the lowest cost per pound, meaning he wants to bulk that animal up fast and get it to the butcher in the least amount of time. The way this is done is by pumping the animal full of steroids, antibiotics, and corn. Corn is one of the most polluted grains there is due to the fact that it’s stored in hot, moist silos, or even worse, out on the ground in a big pile, where it starts to mold. The mold itself can be cooked out of the grain later, but the byproducts of the mold (mycotoxins) are heat-stable and can’t be destroyed by cooking. The grain that is too moldy to be sold for human consumption is sold as animal feed and that’s what our beef cattle are getting to “fatten them up” for market. All of those mycotoxins (and the antibiotics and steroids) eventually end up in the fat cells of the animal. Yes, there are still some in the lean muscle mass, but for the most part it settles in the fat and in the liver. The liver is the filtering organ and ends up collecting most of this bad stuff. So if you eat liver or fat, you’re getting the same antibiotics, steroids, and mycotoxins that those cattle ate. The same thing applies to chicken and pork. If you can find grass-fed meats instead of grain-fed meats, you’re a step ahead.

So, what’s wrong with soy? Where should I start? First of all, it’s known to cause hypothyroidism, fibroid tumors, and breast cancer. It’s a phyto-estrogen, meaning it is a plant that, by consuming it, will increase the amount of estrogen in your body. Excess estrogen can cause thyroid dysfunction, fibroids, cancer tumors, and insulin resistance. It’s for this reason that Hormone Replacement Therapy (estrogen supplements) has come under such fire in recent years. But nobody is saying, “Don’t eat soy”!

Soy beans themselves are not that bad, in moderation (just like any other legume), although they are still subject to the moldy storage scenario and now a new fungus problem called “soy rust” that was recently imported from South America. But when the soy is processed into soy milk, tofu, tempeh and the like, it’s not the whole bean anymore, and that’s where the real problems start.

Here’s an example: You’re going to turn over a new leaf and start eating a healthy diet. So you start by cutting out all the meat you used to eat and substituting tofu instead. They told you it was good for you, didn’t they? So you have soy two or three times a day, along with soy milk because they told you that was better for you than cow’s milk. You eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. You’re supposed to get healthy now. But pretty soon you notice a pain in your abdomen, so you go to the doctor and he tells you it’s a fibroid tumor in your uterus. No problem, he says, we’ll just cut that right out of you. But keep eating the soy, because it’s good for you. Then you get a lump in your breast and have that cut out. But you keep eating the soy because it’s good for you and the AMA wouldn’t lie to you about something this important. A little later on you notice that you’re low on energy and there’s more hair in your brush than there used to be, and you’re putting on a few pounds, even though you’re still eating a healthy diet. You go back to the doctor and he tells you that you’re over 40 and these things are to be expected. You’re told it’s normal and you should learn to live with it. When your fatigue gets bad enough to go have your thyroid tested, you find you do indeed have hypothyroidism, so the doctor gives you a prescription for some pills to take for the rest of your life, which will shut your thyroid down permanently and you’ll never have the chance to make it right again.

Maybe by now you’re eating more soy, because it’s a healthy food and you’re obviously not healthy at the moment. The next thing you know, you have breast cancer, so the doctor gives you chemotherapy and radiation treatments, both of which are known carcinogens by themselves, not to mention the fact that they make all your hair fall out and they make you so nauseous you can’t eat. The theory behind chemotherapy is that maybe they can kill the tumor cells before they kill the patient. Sometimes they can. But the cause of the problem is still there and the cancer will be back. Plus you’ve now had several intense doses of mycotoxins (the chemo drugs) as well as some radiation, which will only cause the cancer to come back more vigorously. On the next trip to the doctor, you find out you’re “borderline” diabetic, so he gives you more pills to keep your blood sugar down. Now you’ve got no thyroid, you’ve got cancer and diabetes, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and you’re too fat. You’re on several different prescriptions and will be for the rest of your life.

All because you wanted to start eating a healthy diet...

So what is a healthy diet? I’ll discuss that in my next message.

Because Lannie’s part of this newsletter was relatively short (by comparison to my last two), this might be a good place for me to answer a couple of your questions that pertain to “diet.” One old friend wrote:

Q: How much weight have you lost on your diet?

A: According to my bathroom scale, I was once 325 pounds. If you accept the deviation (?15) implied between my scale and the one at the doctor’s office, that was probably 340+ pounds, but let’s stay with 325 because that is the same scale I still use and now I weigh only 203 according to that scale. Therefore, my weight loss from max until today is 122 pounds. But I cannot tell you that I am even on a “diet,” considering what the average American thinks when hearing that word. I do not weigh my food or insist that two-level-tablespoons is all I get. Also, that 122 pounds was loss, gain, loss, gain, and more loss (I’ve probably lost 300 pounds but I got back 178 of it over the years.J). Since we moved here to South Dakota, however, it has been all loss and that has been about 67 pounds in the past 15 months. The biggest jeans I ever wore were size 52 and now they are size 36. Underwear down from XL to M. But you don’t want to know all those measurements; just that whatever it is that I’m doing, it works and it works very well.

Q: How did you lose all that weight?

A: Well, dear, there are a million fad diets out there and many of them work, but only short term. I have tried several of them (including the “original” Atkins’ Diet, which is very different from the current one), so I know the results personally. If you ever quit doing them, you get all your weight back (often plus a few pounds). And some of those (like New Atkins) will cause you problems dangerous to your health (so many Atkins adherents end up having their gall bladders removed). If you know anything about my mindset at all, you might remember that I am 99% scientist and only 1% whacko. J That is, I will follow no fads.

So what does science tell us about losing weight? There is a heat metric called a calorie (a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius at one atmosphere pressure; used by nutritionists to characterize the energy-producing potential in food). Simply put, you require a certain number of these per day to maintain your body “as is” (called your “maintenance level”). If you put more than that number into your body, you will gain weight. If you put less than that number in, you will lose weight. It really is as simply as that. The biggest objection to this is that most people don’t want to eat less. Add to that, most people are lazy and they tend to eat foods that are “quick and easy,” which is another way to say “junk food.” This typical American attitude is what makes it so easy for food manufacturers and diet-book authors to con the majority of the population.

Obviously there are some specifics here that cause this issue to contain difficulties. How do you eat the amount to satisfy your hunger, yet still lose weight? There is another simple word that fixes this, called “work.” Now most of us define that word as the job we have, or used to have. Assembling circuit boards is work. Typing all day is work. Programming is work. Answering phones and greeting visitors is work. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Science defines “work” as moving a mass through a distance. In other words, physical exertion – using your muscles. Doing this type of work burns calories. Put these two paragraphs together and you will find that you can eat a “normal” amount of food and do something that burns up those calories so that the net balance is that you burned more than the difference between your maintenance number and your actual consumption number to create a “maintenance minus x” (how large x is dictates how many ounces of weight you will lose per day). That is, burn more than the excess above the maintenance number and you will lose weight. This forces your body to use up its stored fat.

That simple assumption, however, also means that you need to consider what you take in. Your body requires certain nutrients. Moderate the carbs (don’t go overboard like Atkins). Lower the fat intake (do not totally eliminate fats as some fad diets suggest). If you don’t get enough vitamins and minerals in your diet, take a supplement, but be sure that supplement can be absorbed (gel capsules do not dissolve soon enough for your body to utilize the entire contents - the best form is a powder dissolved in a juice or water, or one of those liquid vitamin/mineral drinks).

It really is this simple. Luckily, I have a spouse who cooks good healthy meals and grows/harvests/cans our garden of healthy foods and herbs so we stay away, as much as possible, from that stuff from the grocery store that is full of unhealthy chemicals and pesticides and antibacterials that will make you sick. Also, because it is 75 miles from my house to the nearest Burger King, there are very few junk foods in our diet. J

The last bit here is to stay away from diet doctors. Doctors will only load you with prescriptions, all of which have side effects that will cause you to get on more medications to eliminate those symptoms, and on and on. Nutritionists, however, will tell you to change your diet. We all know that change is probably the hardest thing for the average American sheeple to accept, but if you refuse to change your diet, and perhaps your whole lifestyle, you will never be able to change the shape of your body.

Q: So what is the work (exercise) you do?

A; That one is simple: buy a farm and take care of it. J Now I know you all can’t take the radical measures I did, nor would I expect you to. I wouldn’t even ask you to join the gym and lift weights or take ballet dancing classes. But the bottom line is that you have to turn off the TV and get off your butt. Go for a walk. Do enough physical exertion to sweat profusely. That could be as simple as raking the lawn, digging the garden, or landscaping your yard instead of paying someone else to do it for you.

I once consulted a dietician (way back in 1970) who told me that exercise is less than 10% of a weight loss. Maybe that’s true, but if you lose weight and don’t exercise, especially for us older folks, you’re going to be carrying around a lot of baggy skin. Also, note that diet will burn off muscle mass as well as fat, so if you refuse to exercise, you’re going to wake up one morning and wonder why you can’t even walk.

Q: Did all this mycotoxin stuff you’ve been talking about have anything to do with this?

A: No, at least not intentionally. I didn’t understand the fungus/mycotoxin/yeast thing until just a few months ago. Now that Lannie and I are paying attention to mycotoxins, I am still losing weight, but more importantly, I am gaining health and have less pain. But we’ll continue that thought in a later issue.