Caustic Commentary, Spring 2016

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Sally Fallon Morell takes on the Diet Dictocrats

Contents:

• HYPED-UP VIRUS PANIC
• LOW-CARB FOR DIABETICS
• A WARNING FROM RUSSIA
• LETTUCE OR BACON?
• WRONG ABOUT VEGANISM
• GROTESQUE GARDASIL CRUSADE
• MORE ON THE VACCINATION FRONT
• PINK VIAGRA
• SALT SAVES LIVES!
• FROM THE YOU’VE-GOT-TO-BE-KIDDING DEPARTMENT
• MCDONALD’S SWITCHING TO BUTTER!
• PALEOATS

HYPED-UP VIRUS PANIC
Every year, it seems, we are threatened by a new virus—often with a foreign or sinister-sounding name. Remember SARS? Ebola? The new threat comes from Zika, the accused villain for an epidemic of microcephaly (small headedness) in babies born in northeast Brazil. On February 1, 2016 the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus a “world health emergency” requiring a fasttrack effort to develop a vaccine. Until now, the Zika virus did not seem to pose a danger to anyone. Discovered in Uganda in 1947, the hapless microbe causes mild symptoms of fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis, lasting several days to a week. Now, all of a sudden, Zika is causing birth defects in thousands of babies. Media pundits take offense at the suggestion that other, more obvious agents are the cause: herbicides (especially RoundUp) used on GMO grains, the GMO grains themselves, genetically engineered mosquitoes, larvacides used to kill mosquitoes, and vaccinations mandated for pregnant women—women in northeast Brazil receive the Tdap vaccine during the twentieth week of pregnancy. It seems that only a small number of mothers in northeast Brazil whose children suffer birth defects have been exposed to the Zika virus, but the scare creates fear-based justification of more sinister programs. For example, Britain is requiring fumigation of passengers coming into the country from Brazil, and Cuba has embarked on heavy spraying of school rooms with pesticides. And it’s not hard to predict what’s coming next: mandatory Zika vaccinations for young and old to protect the unborn from the horrible fate of microcephaly.

LOW-CARB FOR DIABETICS
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 52 percent of American adults are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Before the discovery of insulin, the only recommendation for diabetics was a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet, based on the observation that the body does not require insulin to process fat and protein. Once injectable insulin became available, that advice changed to a high-carb, lowfat diet, based on the spurious premise that fats (especially animal fats) caused heart disease. But the climate of opinion is changing, as evidenced by the popularity of a January 2015 article in the journal Nutrition: “Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: Critical reviews and evidence base” (31(1):1-13), which has held the number one spot for downloads since publication. The authors—including WAPF member Ann Childers, MD—present major evidence for low-carbohydrate diets as the first approach for diabetes and demonstrate that such diets reliably reduce blood sugar levels and reduce or eliminate the need for medication. Dr. Childers credits the Weston A. Price Foundation for introducing her to the importance of animal fat in human diets.

A WARNING FROM RUSSIA
A report circulating in the Kremlin states that President Putin has issued orders that his people must be protected from GMO “food” and Western pharmaceuticals “at all costs.” According to Putin, human evolution is currently at “grave risk” with Western and global powers “intentionally decelerating the process for their personal gain.” Said Putin: “We as a species have the choice to continue to develop our bodies and brains in a healthy upward trajectory, or we can follow the Western example of recent decades and intentionally poison our population with genetically altered food, pharmaceuticals, vaccinations and fast food that should be classified as a dangerous, addictive drug. . . . We must fight this. A physically and intellectually disabled population is not in our interest.” Putin described the average Westerner as an “intensively vaccinated borderline autistic fat man slumped in front of a screen battling a high-fructose corn syrup comedown” (yournewswire.com/putin-human-evolution-under-threat-by-big-pharma-gmo-vaccines/).

LETTUCE OR BACON?
For years meat eaters have endured finger-wagging and guilt trips based on the assumption that meat production is bad for the environment and contributes to greenhouse gasses (GHG) and global warming. But a new study suggests that eating a vegetarian diet is more likely to contribute to climate change. According to research from Carnegie Mellon University, consumption of fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because these foods have relatively high resources uses and GHG emissions per calorie. Published in Environment Systems and Decisions (March 2016: 36(1); 92-103), the study measured the changes in energy use, blue water footprint and GHG emissions associated with U.S. food consumption patterns. “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon,” said Paul Fischbeck, one of the study authors. “Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.” The authors did not study low-impact, pasture-fed unprocessed dairy production, which would have a far lower impact than conventional confinement dairy subject to high-energy pasteurization processes.

WRONG ABOUT VEGANISM
On a similar note, George Monbiot, who argued in a 2002 Guardian article that veganism “is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world’s most urgent social justice issue,” has changed his mind after reading Meat: A Benign Extravagance (reviewed in Wise Traditions, Spring 2011). He notes that raising beef and pork using the right model—mostly pasture for beef and mostly waste (such as brewers waste, garbage and meat scraps) for pigs—greatly reduces the environmental impact. When we compare the amount of land required to grow meat with the land needed to grow plant products of the same nutritional value to humans—instead of citing a simple conversion rate of feed into meat—“the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1.” The claim that it requires 100,000 liters of water to produce a kilogram of beef is wrong by three orders of magnitude; it is based on the assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge. Monbiot notes that, vegetable oils have a bigger footprint than animal fats and even vegan farming requires the large-scale killing of animals. “Guilt-free” animal production can be “low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale”—something WAPF has advocated all along.

GROTESQUE GARDASIL CRUSADE
Not content with subjecting the blood of infants to toxic substances like mercury, aluminum and polysorbate 80, the pharmaceutical industry set its sights on tweens and teens in 2006 with the introduction of the Gardasil vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV). Said to prevent genital warts in boys and girls, and subsequent cervical cancer in girls. Side effects from Gardasil and other HPV vaccines worldwide include three hundred ninety-seven reported deaths and almost eight thousand serious adverse effects—such as premature ovarian failure (lifelong infertility), multiple sclerosis-like symptoms, seizures, paralysis, memory loss and digestive disorders. One victim was Joel Gomez, a healthy fourteen-year-old boy who was found dead in his bed the day after his second Gardasil shot. A 2015 Japanese report, published in Brain Nerve, describes a “relatively high incidence of chronic limb pain, frequently complicated by violent, tremulous involuntary movements” along with “cognitive dysfunction” in Japanese girls after the HPV vaccination (2015 Jul;67(7):835-43). In January, the American College of Pediatricians called for a study on a possible link between premature ovarian failure and HPV vaccination. A report in Vaccine posted January 9 which described behavioral abnormalities in young female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and Gardasil, caused quite a stir. True to the spirit of scientific discourse, the publisher has removed the study from the Internet; this was followed by damage control in the form of a study in Pediatrics, posted February 22, claiming that HPV infection rates in teen girls and young women have declined due to the vaccine. What bothers Merck, makers of the vaccine, is the “low uptake”—only 40 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys have submitted to the jab. In order to up the rates and sell more vaccines, all sixty-nine of the National Cancer Institute’s centers are urging parents and health-care providers to complete the regimen by their thirteenth birthdays (Washington Post, January 28, 2016).

MORE ON THE VACCINATION FRONT
The U.S. Federal Vaccine Court awarded sixty-one million dollars to a child who will need complete, round-the-clock medical care following an adverse reaction to a DTaP immunization; researchers confirmed that a 2011 New York measles outbreak originated from a fully vaccinated woman—“ Measles Mary” had no blood markers of immunity despite receiving two doses of the measles vaccine; an outbreak of influenza occurred among Navy crew members who were 100 percent vaccinated; legislators in California have requested a waiver in order to administer mercury-containing flu vaccines to pregnant women and children under three—only “preservative-free” vaccines can be given to children under three according to California law, and a shortage is resulting in “significant missed opportunities” for vaccination; parents are questioning vaccines as epilepsy rates rise to one in twenty children under five; and paramedics were called to a UK school when ten students keeled over after a meningitis vaccination. Undaunted, the FDA is preparing to fast track new vaccines targeting pregnant women.

PINK VIAGRA
For women suffering from the “disease” called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), we have a pill for you. Produced by a heavily funded (to the tune of fifty million dollars) start-up called Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the drug received FDA approval in August 2015 after two previous rejections. (Two days after approval, Sprout was purchased by a subsidiary of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International for one billion dollars cash and a portion of future earnings.) According to Gary G. Kohls, MD, the drug is likely to be destructive of serotonin nerves if taken long term. Structurally similar to the weight-loss drug fenfluramine (or Fen-Phen), the new drug, called Addyi, may also cause serious cardiac side effects. Pre-approval trials were flimsy at best; one involved a study with sexually immature female rats who, after several weeks on the drugs, “appeared” to the observers to be sexually interested in male rats—but only after injections of synthetic estrogen and progesterone drugs! What to do if the libido has waned? First and foremost embrace an animal fat-rich diet to supply plentiful cholesterol and vitamin A—both needed to make sex hormones. Dr. Kohls also points out that many psychiatric drugs, including SSRI antidepressants, can dampen sex drive. Fortunately, those animal fats can help with depression too (www.metronidazole.org/2015/09/flibanserin-addyi-the-alleged-libido-pill-for-women.html).

SALT SAVES LIVES!
Patients with heart failure often leave the hospital with a warning to avoid salt. This advice could be deadly according to a new study. The researchers followed patients hospitalized for heart failure for three years. Those on sodium-restricted diets had a significantly higher risk of death or heart failure hospitalization compared to those who did not restrict salt (JACC Heart Fail. 2016 Jan;4(1):24-35). Salt is essential to life, including heart function—that is why we have salt taste buds on our tongue, to ensure that we put salt on our food.

FROM THE YOU’VE-GOT-TO-BE-KIDDING DEPARTMENT
Cattle burp and flatulate frequently, and when they do, they expel methane gas, the product of cellulose fermentation (whether it occurs inside the cow or on the ground or in wetlands). The process occurs—and has been occurring for thousands of years—whether or not cows populate the earth, but cows are the current scapegoat for these nasty greenhouse gas emissions. Not to worry, a solution is at hand! Scientists in New Zealand have developed a vaccine to reduce methane emissions for dairy and beef cows. According to Rick Pridmore, “strategy and investment leader for sustainability at Dairy NZ,” the development of a vaccine could mean a reduction in methane emissions from cows by between 25 and 30 percent. The vaccine works by targeting methanogens, the gut bacteria that produce methane. These methanogens are ubiquitous, so the vaccine could be used in herds worldwide. What a vision! Knock out the bacteria that animals throughout the world need to digest grass. Could there possibly be unintended consequences? Such a thought does not seem to have crossed the minds of the madmen developing the anti-methane vaccine (www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-10/mitigating-methane-emissions-from-cattle-via-vaccine/6925676).

MCDONALD’S SWITCHING TO BUTTER!
McDonald’s has announced it will use butter rather than liquid margarine on its Egg McMuffin and for cooking eggs. The rollout will occur once locations deplete their supply of liquid margarine. This switch to real food follows other changes, such as increasing the size of the beef patties in its Quarter Pounder and using chicken and milk from animals raised without antibiotics. These changes represent an effort to boost sales in today’s health-conscious market. In July, McDonald’s announced second-quarter sales for the year had dropped 10 percent. The transition to butter will require an increase in dairy production by six hundred million pounds of milk per year—what a pity that the USDA and state departments of agriculture talked America’s dairy farmers into lowfat-producing Holstein cows. Unfortunately, McDonald’s has yet to make the most important and most health-supporting change: cooking the french fries in stable tallow instead of toxic vegetable oil.

PALEOATS
A key tenet of the paleo diet holds that our Paleolithic ancestors did not consume grains. But scientists have found evidence for grain consumption on an ancient grinding stone found in the Grotta Paglicci, Apulia, in southern Italy. The stone dates from the late Paleolithic era. Recovered in the 1950s, a team at the University of Florence in Italy recently studied the debris and found the oat fragments. The researchers determined that the people heated the grains before grinding them with the stone in order to preserve and prep them for processing. The resulting powder was then made into bread and oatmeal. In these pages, we have reported on grain cultivation among primitive peoples in California and Australia. It’s a myth that our ancestors did not eat grain (http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/09/15/paleolithic-hunter-gatherers-loved-oatmeal-too.html ).

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