The Starch Solution (19 page)

If the dairy industry has us wrapped around its milk glass, the supplement industry is no better. Taking calcium supplements may be dangerous, too. Calcium supplements interfere with iron absorption and cause constipation, and may cause even greater harm over the long term.
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,
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Calcium supplements, given alone, improve bone mineral density but offer little benefit in reducing the risk of fractures, and may even increase fracture risk.
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It is likely that any benefits they do provide are a result of the supplements’ alkalinizing effects.
²³
Antacids made from calcium carbonate are commonly taken for bone health. It is not the calcium that benefits the bone but the alkalinizing carbonate, which neutralizes dietary acids that result from eating meat, poultry, fish, and cheese. If not for the antacid, the bones would have to give up their carbonate and other neutralizing agents, eventually leading to bone loss. Other antacids, such as sodium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, or aluminum hydroxide, offer a similar benefit by neutralizing dietary acids and preventing bone loss, even though they contain no calcium at all.
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A review in the July 2010
British Medical Journal
found that calcium supplements (without added vitamin D) were associated with an increased risk of heart attacks.
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The analysis included 12,000 participants from 11 randomized controlled trials, and found that calcium supplements were associated with an approximately 30 percent relative increase in heart attacks, as well as small increases in the risk for stroke and overall mortality. In their summary, the authors state that the “…treatment of 1,000 people with calcium for 5 years would cause an additional 14 myocardial infarctions, 10 strokes, and 13 deaths, and prevent 26 fractures.”

There is no simple explanation for these findings. Undoubtedly, taking calcium as an isolated, concentrated nutrient causes imbalances in the body, which increases the risk of death and disease. (See
Chapter 11
for a more detailed discussion of dietary supplements.)

Dairy products have been the foods most often recalled by the FDA because of contamination with infectious agents.
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These foods are commonly tainted with disease-causing bacteria such as salmonella, staphylococci, Listeria, and deadly E. coli.
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Dairy may also carry Mycobacterium paratuberculosis,
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which may cause the life-threatening form of chronic colitis known as Crohn’s disease. Dairy foods are also contaminated with viruses, including those known to cause lymphoma and leukemia-like diseases, as well as immune deficiency, in cattle.

The Animal and Plant Inspection Services division of the USDA reported in 2007 that the cattle in 89 percent of US dairy operations showed evidence of infection with bovine leukemia virus.
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Spread of the virus within herds was commonly caused by factory farming practices that include passing contamination through shared syringes, dehorning instruments, rectal probing, tattooing needles, and pooled colostrum (milk for newborn calves that cows generate right before giving birth). Factory farms feed their sick and dying cows, called “downer cows,” to chickens and pigs. They also feed the floor sweepings from chicken and pigs back to the cows, recirculating infectious microbes. These practices affect nearly our entire US milk supply; holding tanks used to collect milk from herds of 500 or more cows are found to be infected 100 percent of the time with these viruses.
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Scientists have known about this health hazard since 1969.
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Bovine leukemia viruses are easily spread through cow’s milk to other species of animals, such as goats and sheep, which can subsequently become infected and ill with leukemia.
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In 1974 it was reported that two of six infant chimpanzees fed infected cow’s milk died of leukemia within a year.
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In December 2003, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley published their findings from a study that used state-of-the-art detection methods to discover that 74 percent of 257 people selected from their community had been infected with bovine leukemia viruses.
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Each year in the United States, about 45,000 new cases of leukemia and 74,000 new cases of lymphoma occur for what most doctors claim to be “unknown reasons.” Although the dairy industry and others may consider research findings inconclusive when they connect these illnesses with bovine leukemia viruses, the burden of proof should lie with those selling this food to you and your family. It has not been proven safe to eat dairy infected with leukemia viruses, and the evidence is even more damning now that it is clear that these viruses infect the vast majority of people who eat meat and milk products.

Nutritionally speaking, dairy products—whether in liquid or solid form—are similar to red meats. The difference is that most educated people are reasonably well aware that eating too much meat is unhealthy. However, with milk, we are more likely to believe advertising claims that it is strengthening our bones and, if it is represented as low in fat (despite that it generally is not), that it will help us to lose weight and become healthy.

The fact that billions of people the world over grow into normal adults with healthy bones without ever drinking a glass of milk or taking a calcium supplement should make it obvious that we do not need any more calcium in our diet than we get from eating plants. If milk is truly critical to building strong bones, why are humans the only species that continues to drink it after weaning, and the only animal that drinks the milk of other species? Causation and association have been documented between dairy products and any number of diseases. If you are willing to stop eating just one group of foods, you will experience the most profound improvement in your health and appearance by eliminating all dairy. Even though I feel very strongly about the ill effects of meat, poultry, and fish, and am so very passionate about the harm to health and the environment caused by eating them, I encourage you to send Elsie the Cow out to pasture, first and foremost.
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You and your family will be much better off without her.

I began dieting before I reached high school, then took amphetamines in my teens to lose weight. I starved myself for a week in college to squeeze into an outfit. I continued on and off diets until my weight ballooned with pregnancy. When my second child was born I weighed 200 pounds.

I lost weight eating meat and eggs for a year on the Atkins diet until I felt so sick I couldn’t continue. The weight quickly came back. I tried Weight Watchers, TOPS, the grapefruit diet, jogging—you name it. By age 48, I was 306 pounds; the only place I could weigh myself was the freight scale at work.

When I came across Dr. McDougall I decided to give this starch-based approach a try, stopping short of forgoing skim milk with my morning cereal. Meanwhile, my cholesterol hovered stubbornly around 200. It wasn’t until I gave up the milk that my cholesterol levels dropped below 160. The McDougall Diet was surprisingly easy to follow, in large
part because I could eat as much as I wanted. A little over a year later I weighed 146, 160 pounds below my peak. I went from being miserable, embarrassed, and nearly immobile to feeling happy and energetic. My new confidence helped me to leave a 23-year career for a job that made me happy.

There was a bump in the road when, after a breast cancer diagnosis and lumpectomy, I was given steroids to counter the side effects from chemo. My steroid-fueled appetite broke my resolve as I added sweets back to my diet, then meat. By age 58, I found myself in the parking lot of my favorite fast-food restaurant, crying out for help while stuffing down a sandwich, fries, brownies, and a Diet Coke. I was back up to 282 pounds.

My doctor prescribed drugs when my cholesterol shot back up into the 250s. He insisted on Fosamax for osteoporosis. Chest pains, along with numbness and tingling in my feet, pointed to potential heart problems and diabetes. Yet, despite a painful hip that kept me from sleeping, I refused to take prescription medications for fear of their health risks. My doctor referred me to a nutritionist but I refused to go. I knew what their advice would be: dairy products, “healthy” fats, and skinless chicken breasts. I also knew what I needed to do: get back on the McDougall Diet.

I bit the bullet, and less than 2 years later I’d lost 149 pounds to weigh 133. I bought my first pair of size 8 pants, ever. My blood pressure dropped from 146/86 to 105/64 millimeters of mercury and my cholesterol to 163 milligrams per deciliter. I now exercise daily and my hip no longer hurts. I feel younger and more energetic than ever. I am no longer depressed. And I’ve regained my self-respect.

I
fell in love with the ocean at age 5 in my kindergarten class while watching a 35-millimeter film depicting undersea life. The movie showed fish in a rainbow of brilliant hues, scraggly coral formations, giant clams, and hermit crabs.

When I was 12, my dad and I took up scuba diving. My early underwater explorations were limited to the murky, lifeless waters of nearby Michigan lakes. When I was in my early teens, our family vacationed in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a chain of barrier islands that is home to the largest estuary system in the world. We hung our poles over the side of our small boat, catching and devouring deep-sea flounder, bluefish, and dorado.

My first open-ocean scuba experience was in 1969, during spring break from my first year of medical school at Michigan State University. This time I traveled to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, an underwater park in the Florida Keys where thousands of colorful fish swarmed around me as I meandered through coral forests. I was so delighted with the experience that I brought my new bride, Mary, back there for a scuba-diving honeymoon 3 years later.

In 1972 we moved to Hawaii, where we collected small tropical fish with hand nets for our saltwater aquariums. Sadly, most of them landed belly up in their tank within a few days of capture, my first peek at a
grim reality: My love of fishing, diving, and stocking our aquarium required that I kill the very fish I treasured. Over the next couple of decades, several times a year I would capture large, beautiful fish—mahimahi, tuna, salmon—in the waters off Hawaii and California using line or spear. I considered it my birthright to take these fishes’ lives for my own enjoyment and sustenance. I reasoned that proteins and good fats were critical to my nutrition and that fish was one of the most healthful sources of both. It all seemed so natural. But I had so much to learn.

Since the blissful ignorance of childhood I have spent the last five decades directly witnessing the devastation of the lively ocean ecosystem I so greatly prize and had a hand in depleting. Since the 1950s,
90 percent of the world’s fish stocks have been exhausted by the fishing industry.
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More than a third of all sea life—bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, Alaskan king crab, and Pacific salmon—have had their populations nearly decimated; 7 percent of all fish species have gone extinct altogether.
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