This morning I watched an incredible documentary called Food Matters. I
was enthralled from the first few opening seconds and hooked until the credits. I even watched the credits because they had some background music lyrics that were interesting too. This film is all about the “you are what you eat” concept.
Doctors today don’t receive very much training in nutrition and most patients believe there is a pill that cures everything. IMO and the opinion of the makers of this film…that is exactly the way the “sickness” industry… doctors, pharma companies, junk food companies, etc… want to keep it. There just isn’t comparable profit in health and wellness so the object is to make us sick and keep us sick.
As one gentlemen in the film, Andrew Saul said…”good health makes a lot of sense but it doesn’t make a lot of dollars”. I have many “what if” moments when I think what my life would have been if I had been educated when I was kid about whole foods, raw foods, organics, etc. and if those were the exact foods that had been marketed to me when I was growing up. If companies had been concerned about selling my parents or your parents, fresh fruits and greens instead of pop tarts….where would society be. We might have a healthier society but less wealth would have been created. It is the oldest trick in the book…create the “poison” and then “sell” the antidote. I often tally the cost of good health in my mind and then compare it to the cost of the chemotherapy I had at 28 years old. At $7000 a week for chemo and related treatment the costs are not even comparable. Add to that the 4 surgeries (2 major and 2 minor) I had that year. The REAL money is in sickness. Imagine if we had an epidemic of health? The pharma companies would be out 300 billion a year just in the US… they have ZERO incentive to push health on us.
One scary statistic is that since our food travels 1500-2000 miles to reach us and it is already a week old when it hits stores so we are lucky if we get 40% of the original nutritional content from that food. The food is probably already being grown in unhealthy, depleted soil to begin with. Add to that the herbicides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, GMOs, etc…all the crap that is put in our food or done to it as it grows and we have a SERIOUS problem….a perfect recipe for sickness. A recipe that is profitable. It may not have gotten its start as something malicious but the fact that it continues to go on is IMO.
We take home these deficient foods and then cook them…destroying half or more of the remaining nutritional content they have and all the enzymes or “life” in the food. Interestingly in the video they mention that when we eat cooked food our body makes white blood cells in response to the food…reacting to what it considers to be no longer “natural” and taking a pro-active stance…as if saying “What is this crap? I need to be on guard in case this stuff is toxic.” Incredible…our bodies think “cooked” food is unnatural or an invader.
David Wolfe discusses superfoods like Spirulina and cacao beans and how they are some of the most “perfect” foods out there as far as nutrients. He also discusses how our values are making us sicker. We put more emphasis on having a nice car or house than we do having the best possible foods. Why? Because every day we have people marketing to us to tell us that the car is important, the iPod is important, that flat screen is important. We don’t get bombarded with ads for spirulina, kale, or spinach do we?
My favorite part was where Andrew Saul spoke about how the very things that may make us healthier… vitamins, natural medicines, herbs, or supplements, etc. are being touted by our government via the FDA as suspect or dangerous. Every year the assault gets more vicious. They raid stores selling herbal tinctures, they threaten them with law suits, and they make draconian laws that say they can’t tell people that these things can “cure”. The DO NOT want us to have access to the things that could heal us. Thir position is that the only things that can heal us are pharmaceutical drugs. This is the greatest travesty. They want us to believe that anything therapeutically valuable MUST be dangerous. It is in fact illegal in many countries to treat cancer with any sort of nutritional therapy. Even if that is the route you want to go… it is illegal. The only legal therapies are chemo, radiation, and surgery. Ask yourself why that is… money… 200 billion dollars annually.
Doctors rarely if ever prescribe a mere diet change to heal illness. You could have knocked me over with feather when my oncologist told me not to drink milk or eat meat while on Chemo…well I already knew this but I surprised when he told me… cancer cells LOVE acidic animal proteins. How many other cancer patients get this same advice? Not many I think. One of the doctors on the video declared that he thinks 80-90% of hospital patients are admitted due to issues caused directly by poor nutrition. But society at large and the medical community have been trained to ignore that elephant in the room that is nutrition. In fact I remember reading before that medical doctors only get a few weeks of nutritional training. A few weeks in 8 plus years time. That is how much importance they place on food and we are the ones paying the price for that arrogance and ignorance.
One thing that made me see red when I watched this video is that they specifically mention a vitamin that can really help with controlling seizures. I have an epileptic child and due to diet (my doing not the doctor’s) he has been seizure free for 2 years or so now. I never heard one word about vitamins being able to help him. All I heard was MEDICINE. Well, the medicine made him weak, made him lose 20 pounds until he was a skeleton, and it made him scratch his arms until they were bloody and all his doctor wanted to do was increases the dosage. I decided to put him on a special diet, use supplements, and wean him off the meds without the doctor knowing. The Doc’s eyeballs about popped out of his head when he saw a seizure free kid in good health due to naught but good nutrition. The vitamins and nutrients in the food didn’t heal him it just gave him what he needed so his own BODY could heal ITSELF. Now I can clearly see what put us in that position to begin with, his vaccine injury coupled with being a McDonald’s kid for several years.
The only thing I really did not agree with is when one guy said that surgery isn’t helpful. Well, I understand that the body can heal itself but in my case if I had not had my colon re-section I would be dead now most likely. And the amount of pain I was in was un-bearable. I was too far gone to do otherwise and I think for many it does get to that same point. I do however regret letting them remove my gall bladder later on. Yes I got acute pancreatitis but if given time I think I could have healed that on my own…except for the fact that I was taking massive doses of Chemo. I did actually refuse any more Chemo after that against their advice but I didn’t think to insist I keep my gall bladder. That I do regret.
The video also has some VERY alarming things to say about things we are introducing into the body like chemicals, drugs, and silver, mercury fillings you get at the dentist…one word about those…DON’T. There are some horrifying things about cancer which honestly made me really uncomfortable to watch. It was super scary stuff. But along side that there was great info about the Gerson Institute and all they have accomplished in healing cancers without drugs and many times without surgery.
This video is one that all people should watch and high schools should be showing it annually. This information needs to get out to people so that they know that health and wellness can be just a matter of taking personal responsibility.
You can watch it online for only $5 or buy the DVD for $30. I watched online but will also be buying the DVD so I can pass it around to my friends and family. It is an AMAZING film. Watch the trailer below:
I saw that film for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I appreciated a lot of the information it contained. Perhaps the most moving thing to me was realizing that doctors are simply not trained in nutrition. At all. It’s just not on their radar. So, how could they ever diagnose a nutritional deficiency as the root cause of your health problems?
I do wish they had been a little more fair to doctors. Every doctor I know doesn’t want to be in the “sickness” business. They honestly think they’re helping people get better. It’s why most of them became doctors.
That said, doctors are certainly players in a larger system that must keep us sick in order to stay in business and turn a dollar.
It’s too bad doctors are not trained more in nutrition. Someone once told me it’s only a few hours of course work in nutrition for a doctor. So much is linked to how we eat and our health. This just seems odd. Great post Tiffany!
Since our youngest daughter’s diagnosis of food allergies (wheat, soy, dairy, beef, peanut, fish and eggs) a year ago this month nutrition has dominated my world. At first it was just trying to feed her. Don’t get me wrong, I could cook from scratch but b/c I was a working mom I didn’t have time. A lot of our dinners involved a can of cream of something or other. Realizing that I couldn’t feed her and work put an end to work. And then I immersed myself in learning all that I could about our food and where it comes from.
I totally believe you are what you eat. We now eat only organic whole foods, and I am even making our bread now (really bread should only ever consist of a very few ingredients – have you ever read an ingredient label on a pkg of bread???) and in that time our daughter’s health has improved greatly! Her latest appt with the allergist went so well that she came up NEGATIVE on all her skin tests! Her RAST tests still show some low/med levels on most of the foods but acceptable for wheat and soy! So I am buying organic flour and like I said – making bread! And really the only change was in eliminating processed foods. Our daughter has severe asthma attacks as a reaction to a food trigger and she also has severe constipation, in fact from the time she was weaned she was on either mineral oil or miralax… so from the ages of 1 to 5… now with real food she doesn’t need any “help” and her asthma is improved so much that when she has an attack it is always minor.
And we joined a CSA farm nearby to get our organic produce close to home. Every week we will be eating food in season, fresh from the earth in which it was grown giving my family as much nutrition as possible. We will also put in a little garden of our own.
I am definitely going to watch this video.
Can I recommend some books? Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food
Could you share more info on how you are controlling seizures in your son? My Mom and brother both have seizures and I would love to be able to pass some helpful info onto them.
the bible teaches that small matters are what influence big ones. we think it is of little consequence what we do with our bodies but we are so wrong. our bodies are temples no matter what God you believe in. nutrition is the foundation of good health. i’d rather go hungry than eat junk. train yourself for new, sustaining habits. ask for power to overcome, for we are weak. health and happiness to all in 2009!
I recently purchased and watched this video as well and was overwhelmed by how much food really does matter. I found it interesting that there is such concern over using vitamins to cure disease when people will pop most anything a doctor will prescribe. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for pharmaceuticals, but there are also alternatives.
I just found your blog and can’t wait to keep reading!
I also have strong feelings about the correlation between food, nutrition and health and I am excited to watch the video. When I was suffering from food allergy symptoms and suspected that I was gluten intolerant I could not get my doctors to take me seriously. I finally put myself on a wheat-free diet and later was tested through an independent lab to confirm my allergies.
Thank you for your commitment to spreading the word about food health!
I have really been enjoying your blog. I would, however, like to say that it is dangerous to label all doctors as being in the business of sickness. My husband is a MD and a PhD who works long hours researching cancer and bridging the gap between the lab and the patient’s bedside. He, and the many, many other doctors I know, are just like you and me. They want people to be healthy. They have families and children, and they certainly do not push drugs or medicines where there are safe, viable alternatives. Sadly, in our society of litigation, it is hard for a doctor to recommend or sanction an alternative therapy or herbal remedy. Since these are most often unresearched, untested or unproven in human studies, any recommendation from a doctor could result in a lawsuit. More importantly, the patient could not get better or could even get worse. This would then make the doctor negligent. So they offer proven methods instead. However, any good doctor will listen to his or her patient and help them try alternatives as long as the doctor observes and gives follow-up care. For example, my internist diagnosed my high blood pressure and suggested weight loss, exercise, and diet changes to help lower it. She also prescribed a medicine to control the blood pressure. This was her job. Diet and exercise alone may not lower it, and if she didn’t recommend a medicine that would absolutely lower it, she would not be doing her job. There are very serious consequences to walking around with high blood pressure so my doctor’s job is to minimize my risks. The most proven way to do that is with a drug. I wanted to look at other options, though. She was very open to that idea. I took the medicine she prescribed until I found a natural way to lower my blood pressure. When I found what I was looking for, my doctor said I should try it – with proper observation and follow-up. If it worked, great. If not, then we would re-visit the idea of a medicine. I’m happy to say the natural method worked. Both my doctor and I are satisfied.
I am not sure where you live, but most of the people I know who have suffered through cancer and chemo were told about milk, meat, etc. They were all also told how and when to use vitamins. The Journal of the American Medical Association said in a formal statement that regardless of age or health status, all adults should take vitamins since we don’t get the nutritional support we need from our foods. The biggest concern over vitmains and supplements is that they are not regulated or governed by any oversight body, like the FDA. I realize the FDA has many problems to begin with, but at least they offer oversight outside of the company itself. For vitamins and supplements, NO ONE is checking the company or the product to ensure safety, effectiveness or potency. There are many independent studies that show in many cases that what is on the label of the vitamins, IS NOT what is in the pill. Because of this lack of accountability, the medical community can not recommend carte-blanche the use of vitamins as a cure. It is up to us to find vitamins and supplements made by a company we trust and one we know is checking the ingredients. Choose your vitamins from a company that is a registered pharmacy (also make and sell other OTC items like ointments, lotions, fever reducers, etc). They are required to test and are held to a higher standard of accountability then vitamins coming from other companies.
Overall, I would strongly encourage everyone to be their own health advocate. Put forth your own ideas and have honest discussions with your care providers. Doctors spend most of their time seeing patients and trying to keep up with the literature in their fields. However, it is not possible to know everything. If you, as a patient, find information you think is valuable to your case, please present it. If your doctor does not listen to you or take you seriously, FIND ANOTHER ONE. There are many wonderful doctors out there who put patients first.
To clarify a couple of points: Doctors do not spend 8 years in medical school. Medical school consists of 2 years classroom education followed by 2 years of 4-12 week-long hands-on rotations in various medical specialty fields (Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Internal Medicine, Surgery, etc). After graduation, medical students become residents in their chosen field where they spend 1-7 years learning at the bedside. Doctors can not possibly spend more time on nutrition during school and residency. They should not spend more time earning nutrition than they spend learning basic pediatrics or internal medicine. They are learning to be medical doctors not nutritionists. Doctors have spent many years (and lots of money – most seriously in debt when they leave school) on their training, but they can’t be experts on everything – which is why they specialize. We wouldn’t settle for a dermatologist to deal with our cancer! People should consider seeing a nutritionist to get the proper information and direction for their diet, fitness, etc. The information learned from the expert – the nutritionist – should be shared then with the doctor.
It is up to us as individuals to create a total health and wellness program for ourselves and for our families.
I am thankful to live in a community where I can go see my doctor who practices CAM. I am actually trying to overcome some anxiety issues I have and my “prescriptions” were some different breathing treatments and a recommendation to an acupuncturist (too bad they aren’t covered under insurance). All this from a conventional doctor’s office where I only had to pay my $15 co-pay. I live in Tucson, AZ and although the crime here and border issues can get scary, I am thankful that there are alot of resources for natural health. I wish it was everywhere like this in the world. My mom and sister live in Nebraska and So. Dakota and it is a little more difficult for them to live that kind of lifestyle, but I am glad to see it coming more about in the country so far. As a matter of fact, I was just watching PBS with my son and the show was on it’s “break” (most the shows have 2 ‘episodes’ w/in the half hour and a break at the 15 min mark) and it showed a clip of a naturopathic doctor talking to some kids and showing them some healing herbs and explaining to them that he not only helps people get better, he also shows them how to always stay well. I was very impressed that they promoted that. They also do commercials for Earth’s Best organic. At least the word of natural health is leaking into the mainstream. Yay for public television stations! :)
I’ll be watching the movie soon! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Unfortunately I have to disagree with you regarding the effectiveness of popping vitamins. There are a large number of European studies (I never believe US studies – to hard to follow the money trail :)) that show they have no effect vs. placebos. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/vitamin-supplements-do-us-no-good-and-may-be-harmful-809607.html
I think I’ll stick with my local farmers market for my vitamins.
I can’t wait to see this. Thanks for posting such great info. I am a nutrition freak so this type of info is so interesting to me!
I commend you for posting such great information. Since I have eliminated junk food, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, wheat, fast food, sugar (except for dark chocolate), soda, and heavily processed foods from my diet, my entire life has changed for the better! Not only my physical health but mental health and along with this my parenting skills, marriage, etc. Most people think this means you are “depriving” yourself but the opposite is true. Once I got the junk out of my diet, it is amazing how sweet a carrot tastes! How complex wine tastes, how much I crave a raw yummy salad and love all the different tastes. Along with this I also recieve chiropractic care regularly, drink tons of water, had my amalgams removed and take supplements as recommend by said chiropractor. I have witnessed firsthand the power of food and it is amazing. My oldest daughter has a nut allergy and I am hoping to eliminate it through natural methods. Thank you for your great blog.
Can I just say how life changing many of your posts have been for me? I really appreciate this one. It was a great reminder to me of how much importance I need to be putting on the food me and my family eat. Thank you once again!
I am a recent reader of this blog and I LOVE it! I am changing many things I do and the way I eat and feed my family. I have always tried to by natural/organic products that I can. I am all about using natural methods to help heal. I do believe that Dr’s are necessary and needed but yes, many things can be treated naturally.
I SO want to see this movie.
I have High Blood pressure and am not needing to go on medicine as of yet and don’t want to. It runs in my family along with heart problems.
Stefanie Striker- What helped you naturally lower your blood pressure if you don’t mind me asking? I am trying to add more potassium to my diet.
Side note- I ordered the Diva Cup after reading all the good reviews and I LOVE iT!!!!!!!
What was the vitamin that helps with seizures?
Shena it was vitamin E.
Melissa,
If you email me at stefostricker@gmail.com, I can give you all the specifics on the natural blood pressure reducer. I also take a natural cholesterol reducer. It really helped a friend of mine whose doc was looking at putting him on a staten drug.
Hello all “Nature Moms” out there!
I am so very glad that I came across this awesome blog! I am new to this whole blog thing but am rather enjoying it, I love being able to step into the heads of so many different individuals. With that said, I have not yet had a chance to watch the Food Matters video, but I have heard great things. I intend to purchase it very soon!
I am actually a Certified Holistic Nutritionist, and a quite aware of all the madness that is taking place with our food supply, our water, all of the chemicals we place on our skin from trusted companies who manufacture our cosmetic products, the chemicals that are in our household cleaning products, pesticides, fungicides, genetic engineering, bovine growth hormones etc. We live in a world that can be very scary if you do not educate yourself about prevention. You just have to do your research and know what is out there that offers healthy natural alternatives to all of this.
In the case of “Food Matters”, food absolutely does matter! Nutrition is the foundation for all health, it is the healthy, whole foods that we consume that provide our body with needed nutrients to function at optimum capacity. Imagine living off of highly processed foods that provide absolutely no nutrients for the body, this it not healthy for adults, and this is definitely not healthy for growing children. Your body is basically running on empty! Your body can only function under these circumstances for so long before illness begins to take place.
Now about physicians, there are caring doctors driven by good intentions, and there are doctors driven by dollar signs, pharmaceutical intensives. Maybe it is unfair for “All” doctors to be labeled as wanting to work in the “sickness business”, but it is also unfair for individuals who practice Holistic medicine to be considered “Quacks”. This is a never ending battle that will continue to go back and forth, for how long? Who knows?
But what I do know and have written articles about is that there are many organizations that do thrive on the continuance of illness. There is no money in “well” people, and that is a fact! Pharmaceuticals are designed to keep you sick, they are not here to provide a cure or heal. Healing only takes place within the body, and It will never heal itself if it is continuously burdened with toxins such as pharmaceuticals, processed foods, and unhealthy life style etc.
There is so much that I could write about, but it really does not matter unless people are willing to educate themselves about these issues. This blog is a wonderful start!
I believe there is a place for physicians, which include serious infection, medical emergencies and surgery. As far as prevention goes, they do not provide that. Doctors are only trained to deal with illness once it is present in the body, and then they only treat the symptoms, they do not get to the root cause, I could give too many examples of this situation, some ending in death, all of them my friends & family members.
One of which was my mother, who had a large box filled with pharmaceuticals, that she believed were there to improve her quality of life. She would tell me that she felt as though they were making her worse, which they were. So she would go to the doctors and tell them about her symptoms that the drugs were causing. She would leave the office with a new drug, to suppress the first set of symptoms. She was caught up in this vicious cycle! What most do not realize is that Pharma-drugs weaken the immune system and disrupt the body biochemical balance. My mother was very unhealthy and filled to her hair follicles with drugs, her immune system withered away and she died of Immune cancer. Now I am not saying that the Pharma-drugs were the sole culprit, but they played a huge role. She ate unhealthy, lived unhealthy and she remained in a state of negativity. Negative emotions also weaken your immune system and place constant stress on the body (which is cancer causing). So yes food does matter, but so does lifestyle, mental attitude & spirituality.
The “whole” person consists of Mind, Body & Spirit. These all must be addressed, not just one or two of them but All of them.
As I write this I am brought to tears, because so many cases of death could have been prevented. But in the case of my friends and family who have passed due to illness, they had no belief in prevention or holistic health, they believed that their doctors could heal them or save them. And they had the right to believe that, I happen to believe in the healing power of nature. But as I Holistic nutritionist, I do not have the right to push my beliefs on any individual, or advise them to not seek the care of a physician, no nutritionist has the right to do that. So I patiently waited for my mother to seek natural means of help, but she never did and that was journey. These situations in my life have driven me to continue my studies in Holistic Medicine, cancer research, and natural prevention. This is what my God has put me here for and this is what I live for. God has afforded me the opportunity to assist many people through holistic health education…and my journey has just begun.
Oh, I am sorry if this is too long, once again I love this Blog!
Oh this is so good! I just want to comment on the vitamin issue. We do need the vitamins, but man-made/synthetic/altered is not nearly as good as whole food nutrition. YES, our food is hardly what it should be anymore…we cook it, transport it, herbacide/insecticide, you name it and expect it to be good for us. One awesome product that is the next best thing is fruits and vegetables in capsule form. Grown as naturally, picked at the peak time, juiced on the spot and then sugar/pulp removed to go into capsules/chewables or gummie (as little sugar as possible) is something called Juice Plus.
My family takes it and I share it because we believe in it!! We are so much healthier now. We don’t eat enough produce and this is the easy way to fill the gap. Knowing the link between health and nutrition (as Tiffany is testament to) it just makes sense. Thanks for a great blog Tiffany!!!
The great thing is that many doctors are finding out about it and getting on board now with the product and the link with health! Society is hopefully on the way to better health.
I really liked your post. These are really important issues. We can’t stop too short though.
The same criticism that companies have ‘incentive to manipulate and deceive the public’ can be applied to every industry under Capitalism, except that historically it’s been poor non-whites who have suffered the worst conditions. Our current problematic paradigm of scientific universalism (where ‘objective truth’ is generated off in laboratories which are owned by corporations and run for-profit) created an opportunity for this new assault on the public, which corporations took in pursuit of profit. It is a testament to the instability of modern Capital that it destroys the workforce for short-term profit and in doing so ensures problems with medium and long-term profitability. (It is unsustainable in more ways than one.)
I think you’re incorrect that cooked foods are in general bad for you. Cooking can improve the bioavailability of nutrients in some foods (cooked within certain borders, of course).
Correlation doesn’t imply causation —> you are constantly making white blood cells, and you would need nutrients in food to do so. When else would you make white blood cells except after eating?