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Food Is Medicine Part 3 of 5: Are you Fed Up?
Our last live Facebook interview was a great time with my former mentor Rich Dachman, CEO of Brighter Bites. Rich is a pioneer in many facets of our produce industry and is the first that I know of to start preaching to everyone involved in our produce Industry to start “Living our Business” and be better examples to our customers, the consumers. If we do not eat and follow a clean plant-based diet ourselves then how are we supposed to give our consumers any confidence to eat more fruits and vegetables for their health? During the Q & A, Rich likened it to a Ford Salesman who has a Chevy as a personal vehicle. What does that tell his potential Ford customers?
I had the whole script laid out days before interviewing Rich and was really fired up to cover all kinds of topics. Before the interview though, Rich told me to watch a documentary on YouTube called, “FED UP.” This documentary blew my mind and brought to light a sickening part of our World in that Big Business and Big Politics controls and censors so much of our lives, including our food, health, and diets. During this documentary, I kept pausing, rewinding, and scribbling down notes as fast as I could. I also threw away my original interview script and went straight into the Fed-Up documentary with Rich. Rich threw in a whole slew of golden nuggets for our viewers that followed along the lines of this explosive documentary. I know I am a little biased, but Rich blew this Q & A out of the water and is no wonder I have always had so much respect and admiration for him. You can check out the Interview with Rich here.
The 5 main takeaways from “Fed Up”
- Childhood Cases of Type 2 Diabetes Have Exploded
Type 2 diabetes, once known as “adult-onset diabetes” was virtually unheard of in children just a few decades ago. In 1980, there were zero childhood cases of the condition. In 2010, there were 57,636. The numbers keep rising at alarming rates year by year and is estimated to be over 1 million children in the U.S. with Type II diabetes in 2020. With the pandemic issues we have had over the past year I’m guessing that those numbers will eventually be much higher than this estimated 1 million.
2. “Fat-Free” Comes at a Cost
When you remove fat from food, you have a big problem: The food tastes horrible. To compensate for the lack of flavor, food manufacturers add plenty of sugar. Some products that are labeled “low-fat” actually contain twice the sugar of the original, full-fat versions. There is a staggering amount of evidence proving that Sugar is a poison and an addictive poison at that. The big trick was to start pushing Fat Free and make Fat the bad guy. Fat is not our enemy, processed foods and seed oils that are produced through chemical and un-natural processes are our enemies. Introduce our bodies to a foreign chemical that it identifies as poison our bodies immediate response is inflammation, storage of some sort and an almost immediate onset of metabolic stress. This metabolic stress soon becomes metabolic syndrome not to mention a whole host of other dis-ease. A very Dangerous combination is when our tastebuds crave the processed foods but our bodies reject it by displaying a state of dis-ease. That is where the name disease came from by the way.
3. Sugar is a Drug
Brain scans indicate that sugar consumption fires up the same areas of the brain that are triggered by cocaine, and according to Dr. Mark Hyman, it’s eight times as addictive as the narcotic. It is finally becoming more and more well known that Sugar is our enemy. It is hidden in everything that is not healthy to get your cravings up, to eat more, and become addicted to whatever garbage you are stuffing in your face.
4. Sugar Shows Up in Sneaky Places
The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of 6 to 8 teaspoons of sugar per day (1 teaspoon equals 4 grams). Even if you’re not pouring the sweet stuff on your cereal, it shows up in sneaky places like spaghetti sauce and salad dressing (both can contain about 3 teaspoons per serving). A breakfast of orange juice and processed cereal can put you over the daily limit in one meal. Our bodies can only keep a maximum of 16 grams of Sugar in our blood stream at any given time. Any more than that is stored as fat. Before you know it you will become a sugar burner or a fat burner. If you are a sugar burner, then no matter how much you exercise it will always be difficult to get rid of fat and lose weight. The current recommended American diet puts us way over that 16 grams of Sugar before most of us even leave the breakfast table to start the day. So, immediately we begin the cycle of training ourselves to burn sugar for energy for the remainder of the day.
5. Exercise May Not Be the Best Weight Loss Solution
Between the 1980s (the height of America’s aerobics/jazzercise obsession) and 2000, fitness club memberships doubled)–but so did obesity rates. Now experts are questioning whether the age-old “calories in, calories out” philosophy is really accurate. As author Gary Taubes puts it, “We’re not going to exercise our way out of the obesity epidemic.”
Blinded by False Truths
Any time that our Government has become involved in our diets with good intentions of helping our Country become healthier, lobbyists and Big Processed Food Companies have stepped in and blocked or more importantly RE-DIRECTED their efforts. When it first became evident that processed foods were making us sicker and more obese despite the availability of more and more “Fat Free and Low Fat” food options they begun to fund studies showing that it was our fault…we just were not exercising enough. Calories in and Calories out is another huge smoke screen to blind us of the truth. Calories are measured by burning whatever is being calculated. If I burn a piece of wood and I burn a Twinkie, they might have similar Calorie counts. I am not going to get fat from eating a piece of wood. If kale has the same calories as a donut, I am very certain I will not get fat or have major sugar spikes from eating the Kale. Calories In / Calories out is hogwash.
I am so happy that we finally have MD’s and smart PHD’s out here who are conducting non sponsored research to show the TRUTH. Processed foods, Seed Oils and Sugars are killing us in the worst possible way we can be… SLOWLY, very, very slowly. #2 leading contributor to Cancer… Obesity, close second to smoking. I am also Thankful for Podcasts, blogs, online radio, and other media outlets who cannot be censored or controlled by the Food Giants, yet. But I would guess they are trying very hard. Try to find the movie Fed Up on the internet now.
Please do not take my word for it, I am a nobody who is a poster child of these processed foods trying to kill me slowly for the past 20 some odd years. I am not a VICTIM, I chose to eat fast food, fried foods, processed foods and sugar for many years before the consequences began raising their ugly heads in the form of metabolic syndrome then Type II Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, neuropathy, plaque buildup, oxidative stress, hormone deficiencies, depression and my worst one of all, the one NO MAN ever wants to talk about, E.D. These terrible habits I self-induced put me on multiple different medications which all have dangerous side effects. I kept trying to find THE QUICK FIX, the miracle pill and I have had my fair share of the “Why Me’s???” Bottom line, I was not digging deeper. I accepted the doctor’s diagnosis and instructions and part of me began to believe I was a victim in all of this and that I had no control over my “bad luck.” B.S. I have always had control and no number of meds ever helped me edge towards a cure, just extended the consequences of my bad habits in the guise of, “treatment.”
In just two months of cleaning up my diet, I am off multiple meds and insulin
In just two months of cleaning up my diet, I am off multiple meds and insulin. The more I discontinue poisoning myself, my body has begun to do what God designed it to do, heal itself. We all know that if we cut ourselves the cut will heal. There are meds for it, but those meds have nothing to do with the healing, they simply keep out bacteria to prevent infection. Our bodies know exactly what to do when we are not overwhelming them by infecting them.
My great epiphany after watching “Fed Up” and after interviewing Rich was this… Doctors are quick to tell me, lose weight, eat right and exercise, this is a disease, and it is not your fault, then take this pill, that pill and all those pills too but be careful of natural supplements that are not regulated by the FDA. Wait, what? You mean all-natural ingredients that cause NO side effects are dangerous?
What they never told me was, get your act together and stop eating processed poisons that your body is rejecting and killing you. You can only burn fat or sugar. If you have too much of either you will be out of balance or it will cause your body to burn the wrong fuel. You cannot imagine putting diesel in your unleaded fueled sports car? Yet we feed ourselves with the wrong fuel daily and still expect our engine to burn properly. Very few Doctors will ever tell us, Food Heals, our Bodies have the ability to heal when we provide it with the correct environment and do not infect it. God created our un-believably complicated and beautiful brains and bodies to desire a state of homeostasis. He gave us natural remedies, natural foods, and natural cellular processes within our bodies to combat and heal every known dis-ease. He also gave us brilliant Scientists and Doctors, but he never intended us to play God and try to synthesize all of his ingenious designs for better scalability and profit. It is absolutely disgusting that there are those that are profiting from making us sick. “Here is the stuff to make you sick but it tastes delicious and it is addictive, oh and by the way, once you do get sick, here is the antidote that we happen to have for you as well.” Brilliant business model but I’m not very keen on being someone’s golden lab rat.
Our Ignorance is their Brilliance
Dig Deeper folks. Arm yourselves with knowledge and own your own issues. Get comfortable being uncomfortable and embrace the suck as our ELITE Navy Seals do. Get rid of the Victim mentality that big business and big government depend on us having for their gain. Our Ignorance is their Brilliance. Do not give them the satisfaction.
I can only recommend what I have done and who has had a part in turning my journey around:
- Dr. Cate Shanahan; https://drcate.com/
Author of the Fat Fix and the Pioneer MD who found the destructive dangers of processed seed oils. She is amazing and anytime you can listen to her on a podcast or read one of her books you will be way ahead of the game. - Dr. Jason Fung; https://www.dietdoctor.com/authors/dr-jason-fung-m-d
For Reversing Diabetes, Dr. Fung will help you a ton. He is the MD that went against the grain of the medical machine and will help you understand how our bodies were designed to heal themselves if we give them a chance. - Commander Mark Divine; https://unbeatablemind.com/about-mark-divine/
Navy Seal and author of the Unbeatable Mind. He has a brilliant podcast and will give you the tools to make the mind shift needed to take your first steps to wellness.
There are many more that have influenced me tremendously, but I do not want to overwhelm you with feeling like you are going back to school. Just listen to three podcasts or read three blogs on any of these folks and you will be well on your way to self-empowerment. You have control, it is wired into your DNA. It is up to us to unlock it.
To find out more about Rich Dachman of Brighter Bites and their awesome Mission of feeding and educating our Youth and their families nutrient rich fruits and vegetables you can go to their website https://brighterbites.org/
Brighter Bites is a nonprofit that creates communities of health through fresh food with the goal of changing behavior among children and their families to prevent obesity and achieve long-term health. Brighter Bites is an evidence-based, multi-component elementary school, preschool, and summer camp program that utilizes reliable access to fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, and consistent exposure to recipes and messages that feature fresh food. Since 2012, Brighter Bites has distributed more than 40 million pounds of produce and millions of nutrition education materials to more than 475,000 individuals (including teachers) in Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, and Southwest Florida.
Dig Deeper and Blessings for a healthy journey.
