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Nutrition and Health [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-13
This story is an attempt a glimpse of the truth that has been in the open for quite some time. I am writing it in follow up to the SEMDEM DK story about food pyramids in the nineties as well as some pretty good commentary about it by readers that pointed out the pernicious nature of industry in many of our health problems. I don’t follow a veg diet, but I think that balance is important. Although I am not clinically trained, I have worked with doctors for decades and have learned first hand about many medical details discussed because of friends and family. Happy to share more if anyone is interested.
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In the decades before the 70’s no one paid much attention to food and nutrition and health, and there was little creativity in finding out more. As far as I can tell, food and nutrition remain ‘optional’ to this day in medical training.
However, by the end of the 1960’s, starvation around the world combined with overpopulation led to efforts toward Zero Population Growth (ZPG, if you were there). Technology developed by Norman Borlaug, working in Mexico, came to the rescue in the form of creative horticulture breeding that would double the output of wheat and corn grains from a given amount of arable land.
This staved off mass starvation in several parts of the world. It also opened the door to chemical solutions to weed and pest control. Agrichemical companies now offer highly specialized seed that requires a rainbow of chemicals. If a farmer decided not use these products they feared being left behind commercially by those that did — primarily industrial scale agribusinesses.
A second result was that in this country, we produced unprecedented amounts of wheat and corn, far more than our population needed at a time when 3rd world countries were beginning to feed themselves using Norman Borlaug’s techniques. Simply shipping the excess overseas (a la Ukraine) was a low margin proposition. So creative marketing minds created some new high margin products.
These included High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as a substitute for artificially elevated sugar prices, Ethanol to be added to gasoline under a new government subsidy program, and an endless variety of snack foods using not only the excess grains but also new types of saturated and trans fats, sugar (or HFCS), and a host of new chemical preservatives.
It was because of these new products in the American diet that diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other terrible medical conditions began to skyrocket in the 80’s. It would be years before Ethanol’s efficacy as a Green alternative to petroleum was challenged and only after sending untold billions in subsidy payments to Industrial growers and Ethanol producers.
The concept of nutrition as an important factor in health was only beginning in the 1970’s. One-a-Day had been around for a while but not many authoritative sources were recommending vitamins of any sort. In the 1980’s, as the morbidity of the Americans grew, there were not any authoritative recommendations for consumers to avoid unhealthy food. You may remember that when fat intake was blamed for obesity, fat substitute Olestra came out in the 1990’s. After seeing how unhealthy these chemicals were, the industry turned to using sugar as a substitute.
As industrial food and chemical manufacturers saw the threat coming, they conspired to raise prices on vitamins to the point putting them out of the equation. Here is a quote from a Google Bard question on this. I would not trust AI for much but this accurately summarized what was happening at the time.
In addition to the $22 million BASF settlement with the U.S. government in 1995, the European Commission imposed a total fine of €855.2 million (US$1.07 billion) on eight companies involved in the cartel.
The European Commission found that the cartel had fixed prices and allocated markets for vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, D, E, H, K, pantothenic acid, niacin, and biotin. The cartel operated from 1991 to 1999 and raised prices by as much as 100%.
The European Commission's decision was a significant victory for European competition law. It was the largest fine ever imposed by the Commission and showed the Commission's determination to crack down on anticompetitive conduct.
In 1983, I went to Lexington KY to visit a friend who was going to hear a doctor’s presentation on healthy living. She was trying to stop smoking and was concerned about how to live a healthier life. I attended this with her.
The speaker was a cardiovascular surgeon in his late 40’s who had just recuperated from his 4th multiple bypass cardiac procedure. He described lying in his hospital bed thinking about things and decided to begin his own personal research on certain factors including genetics, diet, and lifestyle. There was no fee nor product sold. He just wanted people to know what he learned.
The summary of his talk was:
1 — There is nothing you can do about genetics — at least in the current medical world. We are getting closer but, there is nothing for anyone to do about it except to understand the genetic risks and use the other two factors, Diet and Lifestyle/Environment to try to offset some risk. Both of my grandfathers died of cardiac conditions around 50 yrs old and I had concerns.
2 — Diet was interesting — The word then on the alternative health street was that sugar, salt and fat were bad and vitamins were good. OK — but, this Dr went much further in his months of recovery. He read history and researched how these issues have been handled in the past. As a doctor, he understood what he was reading. He made some striking comments: Salt is bad, not. What he found was there are societies like ocean island populations that inhale and eat much more salt than we consume in western diets. These groups showed no signs of high blood pressure or other western salt induced conditions. The only discernable difference was that sea salt is a mixture of different minerals (all of which are needed in human diets) in certain proportions. Western salt is pure sodium chloride (perhaps with iodine added). Sugar is bad, not. The diets of huge numbers of people, especially in 3rd world countries are heavily tilted towards picked but not processed fruits. Fruits are a major source of sugar. Western refined sucrose and worse yet, refined fructose are poison. A diet balanced that includes whole fruits is very important for reasons that go well beyond the sugar.
3 — Lifestyle/Environment is also complicated. The short of his comments is that the body likes to be used and exposure to environment toxins is bad. These are both things that can be controlled by most people. They do, however, often require a change of lifestyle. Exercise is something anyone can do. It is an attitude not an ability. In our chase for lifestyles that reduce what you actually physically do, many of those who are well off have lost the ability to use our bodies outside of gyms and sports. The same goes for mental exercise. Our minds like to be used as well. Whether it is playing games or working on mentally taxing problems, we have adopted a mentality of thinking less, not more as being the better choice. This is not a healthy choice. The environment is also critical. Exposing one’s self to chemicals through food and non-food consumer products and by living in toxic industrial environments is not good for humans. A quick search found over 100,000 chemicals used by consumers and workers that have not been approved by the FDA. Many of them have never even been tested. With industries that work relentlessly to hide or divert attention from these chemicals and their effects, it is a major challenge to do something about this.
I have many additional references and sources I am happy to share. But, this is my first DK ‘Story’ and I want to see how it goes. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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