Death By Supermarket (27 page)

Once you gain an understanding and appreciation for the art of food, your day might start with an organic spinach omelet made from pasture-raised eggs with deep orange yolks, a bowl of sweet organic strawberries, and a glass of creamy whole raw or organic milk. Coffee would be organically grown or Swiss-water-processed decaffeinated, with raw or organic cream (although quitting coffee is optimal). Lunch could be a fragrant mixed-greens salad tossed with olive oil and rich balsamic vinegar topped with strips of naturally raised ham and quartered ripe heirloom tomatoes brought alive with a sprinkling of aromatic sea salt, followed by juicy organic watermelon chunks and cherries. Dinner might be a succulent, naturally raised lemon- and rosemary-roasted chicken or slices of naturally raised roast beef, steamed organic asparagus spiked with herbs de Provence and drizzled with melted organic butter, crisp russet potato quarters roasted with coconut oil and seasoned with sweet paprika, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper, and a wonderfully bitter watercress salad that requires just a hint of pungent olive oil. Raw cheese and tart organic apples would be dessert. These are not hard meals to put together; preparing delicious, gourmet meals need not be labor intensive.

Simple two-step guidelines for achieving good health and your ideal body composition are: (1) Stop eating anything made of or containing refined white sugar, refined corn, refined grain, refined soy, refined oils,
or chemicals; and (2) instead, eat organically produced meat, fish, poultry, dairy, vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts that could (in theory) be picked, gathered, milked, hunted, or fished, and that have not undergone any science-fiction processing.

After World War II the food industry introduced snacking, with snack foods. Now that large portions have been identified as the reason people are fat, factory-food makers reacted to the public outcry over supersizing by making 100-calorie “snack” packs—which are the same price as the previous full-sized versions—and in three years reaped $300 million. The factory snacks packs, in addition to being laced with high-fructose corn syrup, colored dyes, preservatives, and so on, are also generally made up primarily of genetically modified, highly processed wheat flour (i.e., refined carb).

But snacking has now been replaced by the more benign-sounding “six meals a day” campaign to ostensibly balance our blood sugar to keep us from binging. I find this extremely interesting, as it’s just another way to keep people thinking about and eating food all day long. Many of the proponents of the six small meals a day method are makers or supporters of energy bars, meal replacements, and so on. Most people (except those with severe blood sugar imbalances) do not need to snack regularly. The American diet always comprised three meals a day until the food industry inundated our environment with factory snack products. Historically, people didn’t snack. Rather they ate meals and came to the table hungry. Eating a meal, going hungry, eating a meal, and going hungry is a microcosm of human experience prior to 1900. People ate and went hungry, ate and went hungry. This pattern gives our systems a chance to assimilate food from the previous meal before more food enters and for all the hormones to complete their processes. (This is different than gorging and starving, which is the prehistoric feast-and-famine phenomenon that resulted in higher fat storage after each binge.) That said, there are times when we cannot get to the next meal soon enough. But that doesn’t mean we should eat a Snickers or even a Balance Bar.

An optimal meal or snack should contain (in this order) protein, fat,
and a small amount of carbohydrate. With a little thought, you can dream up all kinds of interesting snacks, like peanut butter with apple quarters, raw cheese, a handful of walnuts and a couple of dried figs, a leftover chicken breast with a cut-up bell pepper, tuna fish salad with grapes and cucumber slices, hummus with carrot sticks, or deviled eggs. By opening your horizons while shopping, you’ll discover delicious foods to snack on.

America is a nation of night eaters who complain about not feeling hungry in the morning. But everyone needs to eat a good breakfast. Eating a protein-based breakfast of real food sets your inner thermostat for the rest of the day and bestows your body with the building materials for the ongoing metabolic repair and building processes.

On the contrary, skipping breakfast or eating sugar tells your body it’s famine time and your inner thermostat must ratchet down. Sumo wrestlers gain their massive girth by skipping breakfast, training on an empty stomach, eating lunch, taking a four-hour nap, eating dinner, and going to bed—and they apparently don’t even eat that much. Not feeling hungry in the morning is an obstacle that can only be overcome by forcing yourself to eat a big protein-based, balanced breakfast as soon as you get up.

One hundred and fifty years of eating science-fiction food products followed by the further malnutrition of low calorie, low fat, and low carb dieting has created a society that is obese, disease ridden, and on a trajectory toward ugly death. So now that we’re fat and sick, we’re sold on miracles in a bottle, snake-oil supplements, and drugs.

PART EIGHT
Miracles in a Bottle, Snake-Oil Supplements, and Drugs

IN THE EARLY 2000S
Americans were introduced—through a series of endless and mindnumbly obnoxious commercials—to the concept of taking a pill to lose 30 pounds virtually overnight. The ads for CortiSlim claimed that persistently elevated levels of the adrenal stress hormone cortisol were the underlying cause of weight gain and that CortiSlim controlled cortisol levels, balanced blood-glucose levels, reduced cravings, and increased metabolism, thereby burning the fat around “your tummy, thighs, and stomach.” We were invited to join the “CortiSlim lifestyle,” to reshape our future with the “resolution solution,” to “get your hopes up, get excited,” and to “be part of television history.”

CortiSlim TV ads ran so repetitively that I could not hit the mute button fast enough. “I’m Dr. Greg Cynaumon, and no offense to casual dieters, but if you only want to lose five to ten pounds, then CortiSlim is not for you. CortiSlim is the weight-loss capsule created by my associate, Dr. Talbott, for people who are disgusted with diets and quickly want to lose fifteen pounds or more.” This particular TV ad ended with Cynaumon holding up a bottle of CortiSlim and smirking. Clearly, he knew that millions of Americans were sprawled out on couches in front of TVs with fists buried to the wrists in bowls of caramel corn. And he knew that thousands of those people would decide then and there to try that CortiSlim stuff, because Greg Cynaumon’s a doctor, and so sincere. Cynaumon was right. Countless people logged onto the Internet or called the 800 number and
ordered one-month supplies of CortiSlim for $49.95. What a relief to know that second-day mail was going to bring a magic bullet that was going to solve all of their weight problems.

The CortiSlim claim that stress-induced cortisol production leads to midsection fat accumulation is true. When you’re stressed out, your adrenal glands secrete adrenaline in response to dramatic, acute stress (like getting into a car wreck) and cortisol in response to everyday stress (like working too late). (Your adrenals secrete numerous other hormones, but our focus is these two.) One primary objective of these hormones is to supply your brain and body with the sugar (fuel) necessary to deal with this stress. Adrenaline releases glycogen (sugar) that’s stored in your liver and muscles for emergency use. And cortisol actually breaks down your lean muscle mass to convert it into more sugar. Now that you’ve got a dump of sugar into your bloodstream, your pancreas secretes insulin, which stores any unused sugar away into cells. After years of pounding stress, your cells will be stuffed to capacity. As you read earlier, when cells can’t accept one more sugar molecule, they then reduce the number of insulin receptors so there are fewer receptors for insulin to activate. This is insulin resistance. One hallmark of insulin resistance is weight gain around the middle, because, though it may strike us as an unfair mistake of nature, fat stored as a result of insulin resistance is hoarded around the waist first.

Our autonomic or unconscious nervous system, which regulates metabolic processes, is divided into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. During the day we’re predominantly in the sympathetic state. It’s appropriate to be in a sympathetic state during the day, because our bodies need the operational metabolic processes that take place during this time.

The parasympathetic mode, which occurs predominantly at night, counteracts the sympathetic mode by turning on the repair processes such as making new cells, membranes, tissues, enzymes, hormones, and neurotransmitters (thus nighttime sleep is appropriately referred to as “beauty sleep”). In times past, humans didn’t necessarily sleep uninterrupted all night long, because of problems such as threats to safety, vermin, smelly
chamber pots, crowded conditions, hunger, and other irritants.
²⁷⁰
In the last hundred years, however, for the first time in history a major population has been swathed in creature comforts and provided the opportunity and luxury of sleeping soundly all night. When it gets dark, hypothetically, our systems could change rhythm from daytime work (sympathetic) to nighttime rest (parasympathetic), the natural repair and rejuvenation phase. But this is not the reality. Instead, we’re enslaved to technologies provided by electricity and to pressing demands. Our circadian rhythms are shattered by overwork and jet travel. We overuse stimulants and indulge in other adrenal assaults that keep our bodies in a constant state of sympathetic dominance. So while we have the allowances to sleep, these other factors have resulted in epidemic insomnia. And all this pounding stress is taking a toll. One of the major signs that we’re not allowing our bodies to spend enough time in the parasympathetic mode are the spare tires we’re lugging.

The solution to reducing the accumulation of stress-induced midsection body fat is to lower our cortisol and insulin levels, which will reverse insulin resistance (i.e., empty fat cells). This can only be accomplished by overhauling our lifestyles, not by popping a pill. One of the pluses of achieving overall health is that your body will shrink down to its natural body weight. Maximum health is accomplished by stopping eating factory-food, eating a balanced diet of real food, reducing stress, cutting down on or quitting all stimulants (sugar, caffeine, tobacco, etc.), drinking only moderately (giving up alcohol until you lose the fat), quitting recreational drugs or any unnecessary OTC and prescription drugs, avoiding toxic exposure and drinking plenty of water to flush poisons from your system, indulging in mind-clearing playtime, and going to bed as early as possible to get eight hours of rest, as well as taking hormone replacement if you need it.

By 2004 a nationwide class-action suit was settled for $4.5 million against the makers of CortiSlim, charging them with making invalid and unsubstantiated weight-loss claims, but it hasn’t stopped copycats from marketing versions in health-food stores and magazine ads.

In early 2004, two class action suits were also filed against the makers
of another weight-loss supplement, TrimSpa, alleging violations of California and New York’s false and misleading advertising business practice laws. On February 9, 2004, the late Anna Nicole Smith, the product’s spokesperson, appeared on
Larry King Live
in what could only be viewed as the paradoxical spokespitch of the century. And you could view the syntax-fracturing, 69-pound-lighter Smith in magazine advertisements and on the TrimSpa website cavorting with a creepy gigolo-ish guy under the tag line “Be Envied.” But should we envy anyone who took TrimSpa?

TrimSpa contains a South American herb,
Hoodia gordonii
, which has been used as an appetite suppressant. We now understand that starvation always results in a higher insulin response to incoming food, a lowered metabolic set point, a craving and bingeing response that is a normal biological response to malnutrition, and an inner drive that is on red alert to hang onto fat cells as insurance, so that you will not die of famine. When you get sick of starving and go back to eating, you will blimp out.

But that is not the only problem with products like this.

TrimSpa originally contained the natural stimulant ephedra, which is extracted from the Chinese herb ma huang. Ephedra was restricted by the FDA after being linked to more than 150 deaths related to cardiac arrest.

So-called “natural” stimulants, such as green tea, ma huang, and guarana, cannot be used with impunity just because they are natural. Ma huang is a very good example of the diet industry’s abuse of a useful therapeutic Chinese herb. Henry Han, O.M.D., my coauthor on
Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine
, told me, “My teacher, Song Tian Bing taught us, ‘Ma huang has energy like a wild untamed horse, so you never want to relinquish control. Don’t ever forget when you use ma huang that you saddle it so that you have the reins.’”