Forks Over Knives

As part of my educational entertainment phase, I just finished watching Forks Over Knives, a super jam packed wake up call for people who are addicted to the standard American diet of processed foods and animal proteins. I should say alarmist, but not without cause. The way millions of Americans eat in this country is atrocious, and a real problem that this documetary is tackling head on, illustrating the consequences of the standard American diet.

What is the standard American diet? It is "My Pyramid", it is cheese burgers and fries with a milkshake, it is canned vegetables and TV dinners, it is candy bars and soda, it is sliced bread and lunch meats, processed sugars and grains. In 100 years, from the 20th to the 21st century, Americans have almost doubled, and sometimes tripled the consumption of these foods. In the early 1900's Americans were eating 120 lbs of meats, 40 lbs of processed sugar, and 294 lbs of dairy annually. In 2000, Americans are now eating, 222 lbs of meat, 147 lbs of all processed sweeteners, 605 lbs of dairy annually. And these figures most accurately reflect children's breakfast and lunches at school, where these industries reign due to government subsidies of dairy and the like. What the movie advocates as an alternative is a plant based diet, with whole grains and legumes as the major protein source, and minimal animal protein. What is minimal? I really don't know. I had two organic eggs with my breakfast of potatoes and a bowl of fresh cilantro, which I think is pretty healthy, but maybe I am wrong. Each egg is 50 grams, and two eggs would be 100 grams, just under 4 ounces. According to the film, that is a lot for one meal! And they are right, but how do we put their theories into action (maybe just one egg in the future, like my mom does)? They criticize the standard American diet which is about 10 ounces of meats a day (eggs is included in that category I suppose). So, considering what I ate this morning, can I have any more meat today? Probably not, but who knows! Much less confusing, I think is dairy, as almost 2 pounds of dairy a day is definitely over the limit, and I will tell you why. On top of all the industrial concerns over dairy, the growth hormones present, the poor lipid profile due to a mostly grain diet, and the anti-biotics administered to keep inflammation down in this undignified animal, all mammal dairy has a protein called casein, which up to now I only understood to be one of the toughest proteins to digest, especially after pasteurization when its digestive enzyme is destroyed by heat (casein found in goat and sheep dairy is not as tough, and easier to digest, as are their fats, which are shorter chain fatty acids, which carry a host of additional health benefits). Turns out, it is much worse than I thought. Casein should never be eaten with fruits, vegetables, chocolate, tea, even coffee, because of the way it blocks the anti-oxidants called polyphenols from doing their job of healing the body. It binds to polyphenols, and renders them helpless to pass through our system, a prisoner of casein's chemical bond. Casein is a bitter rogue, and I for one, am frightened by him now. One would do better to eat dairy products without casein (cream based dairy, that which is entirely milkfat) in combination, or to eat dairy products containing casein by themselves, in moderation. So that solo cup of milk at night once in a while might not be such a bad idea after all (considering that it is whole milk, grass fed, hormone free, and preferably non-homogenized). There is the larger concern that casein is causing cancer. That is something I know very little about, but theoretically, it is possible that cancer cells can be fed from the casein which our body can not digest without its proper digestive enzyme, which would only be found in raw dairy, pre-pasteurization. Cancer cells love all animal protein, perhaps especially that wich they have free reign over. But with raw dairy, our body would digest the protein instead of simply passing it through our system, and then we would be fighting with the cancer cells for the food. I'm still not sure how raw dairy paired with foods rich in anti-oxidant polyphenols would affect polyphenol absorption, but it would be logical to assume that if it has its digestive enzyme, the casein molecule wont be looking roguishly for anything else to link up with; it will already have its match, and catalyze from there into digestible food for our cells.
The main, and most preventable, consequence of the standard American diet is heart disease, specifically athersoclerosis, the clogging of our veins and arteries. Dr. Esselstyn (one of the pioneering doctors), says that heart disease is a "toothless paper tiger", which as the film explains, arose in the 60's as a direct result of all the newfangled processed foods of the 50's, and widespread meat consumption. Essentially, as I understand it, plaque is building up in our veins cells, the endothelial cells, compromising their health due to an excess of low density lipids from too much (poor quality) animal foods. Then there is the carb and sugar contribution (which are also stored as fats when eaten in excess, and create more plaque in our veins and arteries). Along with these deleterious fats, sugars provide ample food for bacteria to wreak havoc on our veins, the result of which is the lining of our arteries first being built-up with plaque, then inflamed to the point of bursting, causing blood blockage which is when the heart breaks down due to incapacitation. I actually got to see a bypass surgery in the video, when they take a vein from your leg, and connect it to your heart, to "bypass" a blocked artery. Fucking wondrous. Want to know what's even more wondrous? The graphic they made of the endothelial cells health being reversed and restored back to youthful beauty with a reform in diet to plant foods and whole grains. You truly are what you eat, and it is so important that the healing power of plants play an active role in the life of your body.
There is much more I would like to write about, but I would like to keep the work topical, and dare I say, digestable. My next blog post will be about food as drugs, and how Americans are truly and literally addicted to the plethora of delicious garbage we adorably call food.

Gasland

I recently watched the documentary Gasland about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, fracking, in the US for natural gas. I had seen some clips about the film from "The Daily Show", so I was expecting to see some tapwater set a flame with nothing more than a lighter beneath the running faucet, but I was horrified by the human, animal, and general environmental toll this practice is wreaking on our fair country. Most interesting is the loss of taste and smell in some of the victims. It can be expected that people are dying from cancers, animals are suffocating instantaneously, and streams are bubbling with natural gas like the US has been transformed into Willy Wonka's natural gasland. Two women featured in the documentary looked woefully into the camera as they described how food to them was now only texture. This is of course, an absurdist lament, atop the migraines and real sickness the natural gas is causing, but in the absurd, we are given an insight into the landscape of this very real menace big business has recently thrust upon us. And this is no propaganda damning big business arbitrarily; in 2005, as the movie describes, Dick Cheney passed an energy bill, The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempts the oil and natural gas industries from 30 years of environmental regulations, under the guise of an effort to move away from greenhouse gases (natural gas is a much cleaner source of energy than oil and coal). But it was all for Halliburton, because by easing these restrictions, big companies such as Encana, Williams, Cabot Oil & Gas, and others were now able to use the new Halliburton technologies to undergo "the largest and most extensive domestic gas drilling in history". These technologies are currently being undergone in 34 states. The product of which is most likely powering my computer right now.
The film begins in media res, in the middle of this hullaballo, with our auteur, Josh Fox, the documentarian, receiving a letter from some big company, proposing a lease of his 20 acres of land in Milanville, NY, for fracking along the Marcellus Shale, a large swath of mineral sediment, which houses what he calls "an Iraq of natural gas". These shale basins all over the US are our great sources of natural gas, which, sadly, we have decided to rape in a half-assed haste which I do not fully comprehend. The rape is as such: a host of chemicals are pumped 8000 feet underground into the sediment to cause a mini-earthquake with several tons of water, to create wells, which release the natural gas into great reactors. These chemicals are a great mix of toxins and carcinogens the likes of which we should be running from, not producing and pumping into mother earth. Then, when the gas is reaped, it is full of all of the toxins, which they simply burn off, and emit freely into the air. If this isn't the dirtiest desecration of our beautiful America, I dont know what is. Fox's concern is for where he lives, here, on the East coast, along the Marcellus Formation/shale, which is housed in the Appalachian mountains, and is no small part. If we lose this area to fracking, the devestation will be so wide-spread, there is no way to compute it simply. In a nutshell, say goodbye to our clean drinking water, the water NY prides itself on, which also serves parts of NJ and Pennsylvania. Even the most sophisticated filtration systems dont stand a chance against the corrosive chemicals that eat the filters of the systems. You can slowly say goodbye to the grassfed dairy and livestock of the catskills, as the air and water will slowly kill the vibrant pride of that small beacon of light in this dark, American foodscape. Oh, and say goodbye to hiking and camping, as the streams will be bubbling with natural gas, and the rocks may be hissing a wealth of that good stuff! But who cares, right? This is all hippie shit.