A STRATEGY
Raw milk proponents could learn a lot about strategy in studying how the USDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) were stopped regarding toxic spraying for the light brown apple moth. I hope that someone can take this idea and put some action behind it, because I think there is a problem with some of the court cases about raw milk. The issue gets narrowed to a very small point about whom to believe— the FDA which says the milk is deadly, or the regular raw milk drinker who swears by it.
In California a few years ago, the CDFA started an aerial spray program for the light brown apple moth. It was one of those federal programs where the state just went along with it. They actually crop dusted the cities of Monterey and Santa Cruz with an untested chemical encapsulated in microscopic spheres. All because a moth might cause economic damage to some crops. In comparison to the raw milk war, the moth spray is a much clearer case of the government overstepping its boundaries.
Yet people lost in federal court trying to stop the spray; they were able to win a short restraining order in state court but then lost at the hearing and the spraying continued. This is because when the state judge was forced into a corner, the issue was distilled down to a scientific argument. In that small realm, the judge generally sides with the government because the judge is not a scientist and cannot differentiate between true and false. The judge could not see even the simple fact that people were being sprayed with untested chemicals against their will.
Fortunately, the spraying was later stopped in state court on a procedural issue. The CDFA had not complied with the state environmental law of doing an environmental impact report. This was the only issue that the judge took note of. Think of the parallels to raw milk court cases. With the moth spray the constitutional arguments failed and health arguments failed. What worked was finding conflict with other state environmental laws.
It took about two years for the state to finish its massive environmental report, in which they, of course, said the spray was safe; with the requirement satisfied, they planned to continue spraying. Fortunately, during the interim, a group of very passionate citizens worked together on fighting the moth spray, which included a petition to the National Academy of Sciences to review the data regarding the classification of the moth. A panel over at NAS reviewed the USDA’s report on the moth, and reclassified it as a “non-actionable pest.” They basically rebuked the USDA’s handling of the matter.
At this point, I believe the case is closed and the CDFA and USDA have crawled back into their corners because their lies and poor judgment were brought into the public domain by NAS.
Again, reviewing the parallels to raw milk cases, the judge will generally believe whatever the government says. But, if another branch of government, government accountability office, National Academy of Sciences, even a university, would make a report that discredits the government’s actions, then the judge would have a much easier time ruling in favor of raw milk. At this point there are good scientific reports about raw milk, but I don’t know if any of them have the stamp of authority that a judge would be compelled to believe. Since most judges are not scientists, they get confused on the points and then default to the FDA’s position. Therefore it would be powerful if there could be an independent report on the FDA’s position in terms of constitutionality, as well as a report on their science.
Here are two links regarding the apple moth and the report: www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12762 and www.santacruzsentinel.com/localstories/ci_13339087.
While I believe that the common law rights and constitutional rights of citizens clearly protect private buyer clubs, it is important to acknowledge that the executive branches of the government, such as the CDFA and the Santa Clara and LA district attorneys in California, including the judges who issue the warrants, do not value or even acknowledge those rights. In light of the flagrant violation of individual rights and liberties, citizens need to stand firmly in ways that find additional support, clarification and protection for those rights. Top priority should be given to passing food freedom laws. We should no longer tolerate the government banning safe, clean, natural food, while at the same time condoning toxic food and medicine.
Rami Nagel
Ashland, Oregon
DOT CALM CAFÉ
Thank you for your write up about Dealer.Com’s Dot Calm café in the Summer, 2011 issue.
Dealer.Com is the leading provider of online marketing solutions for car dealerships and manufacturers throughout North America. Mark Bonfigli, CEO, understands the importance of wellness and the impact it can have on employee happiness; he has modeled the company’s wellness program after the WAPF guidelines. In addition to the on-site Dot Calm café that serves only WAPF foods, the LIFE team offers over twenty weekly group fitness classes, an on-site wellness coach, wellness seminars, and health incentives to stay fit. Seminars are held in the brand new one-hundred-fifty person theater, which recently featured “The Oiling of America.” And many fitness classes are held in the sunny CrossFit studio, which boasts a retractable glass roof to let in UV rays and fresh air while exercising. In addition, the facility has a full indoor tennis court and weight room. Coming next year is a roof-top garden along with gardening classes.
Heidi Brigham, Life Director
Burlington, Vermont
Editor’s Response: What a wonderful model for other companies! I am sure Dealer.Com saves a great deal of money in the long run by providing accurate nutrition advice and nourishing traditional foods to its employees. We predict that in the future many other companies will do the same.
DECLINE IN MILK CONSUMPTION
In a recent article in the publication Progressive Dairyman, the author ponders the relentless fall in fluid milk consumption in America. What he does not mention is the fact that fluid pasteurized milk is listed as the top most allergenic food in America by the Mayo Clinic and others. It all comes down to simple science. When bacteria are killed during pasteurization, the resulting pieces of dead bacteria are foreign protein wastes that our bodies react against. MAST cells release their histamines, asthma bronchial spasm occurs, mucus is released that creates the bed for ear infections, and allergies rage. When doctors tell their patients not to drink milk, they are referring to milk that is pasteurized (and ultrapasteurized).
In California, organic raw milk is sold in four hundred stores and consumed by about sixty to seventy thousand people every week. They report few allergies and in fact the opposite is true—most allergies and asthma improve dramatically with raw milk. This highly beneficial raw milk physiology was demonstrated by the peer reviewed and published PARSIFAL study of fifteen thousand kids in EU who drank raw farm fresh milk.
The dairy industry needs to connect to their consumers and listen to them and their physiologic and digestive needs. The industry needs to fire the processors and their big-lie campaigns. The propaganda does not work anymore because the human body does not lie to its owner. The science project performed every single time someone drinks pasteurized milk comes through within minutes with the irrefutable study result. Either it is mucus-forming from MAST cell release of histamines or it is lactose intolerance. Neither mucus from histamines nor lactose intolerance are associated with raw milk consumption.
Mark McAfee
Fresno, California
DECADES OUT OF DATE
The website of the Harvard School of Public Health advocates substituting margarine for butter and consuming only limited amounts of non-fat and lowfat milk and cheese. These recommendations are based on the purported association of dairy consumption with coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis and prostate cancer. All of these health problems are known to be caused in part by vitamin K2 deficiency. Harvard’s recommendation to avoid fullfat dairy products is likely to greatly increase vitamin K2 deficiency. A search of the website search engine for vitamin K2 or menaquinone turns up nothing! They are decades out of date.
I recently ran across a study by D. Mozaffarian and others of Harvard which suggests rather remarkable benefits resulting from the consumption of full-fat dairy products. The disparity between the study findings and the dairy bashing on the website of the Harvard School of Public Health is so stark (or perhaps amusing and crazy) that I had to comment on it.
The wording of the study is somewhat obscure, to say the least, so I will provide my layman’s interpretation: Dairy fat is the most complex of fats, containing over four hundred fatty acids. One dairy fatty acid, trans-palmitoleic acid, is a good marker of full-fat dairy consumption in part because it is not synthesized by humans and, in multivariate analysis, was found to be most strongly associated with whole-fat dairy consumption.
In a study of over thirty-seven hundred women, those in the highest quintile of trans-palmitoleic acid levels (that is, higher whole-fat dairy intake) were found to be associated with slightly lower adiposity and independently with higher HDL cholesterol levels, lower triglyceride levels, and low TC/ HDL-C ratio, lower CRP levels and lower insulin resistance. These are all considered indicators of reduced risk of CHD and atherosclerosis. Further, those with the highest level of transpalmitoleic acid (therefore highest whole-milk intake) had a remarkably lower incidence of type-two diabetes, relative risk 0.41! That is a 59 percent reduction in risk (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=21173413)!
What strikes me is that whole-fat dairy consumption reduced CHD risk and greatly reduced risk of type-two diabetes, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of milk consumed was damaged by pasteurization, ultra-pasteurization and homogenization and comes from cows ill from eating an unnatural diet of grain. Imagine how much better the results would have been if the subjects had consumed decent milk!
John Cameron
Fairhope, Alabama
FEEDING THE POOR
I support various missions involved in feeding the hungry of the world. I recently read about one sister who imports soybeans and develops them into various soy products (including soy milk) to supplement the diet of poor communities in El Salvador. Apparently the program (which started in 1993) is very successful. This lovely woman is obviously dedicated to serving the poor and far be it from me (an American who has a choice in what I eat), to criticize her, but some questions were raised in my mind. Isn’t this just playing right into the hands of GMO proponents who tout soy as the salvation of the hungry?
Can the benefits of sheer protein calories, which are lacking in any form in these poor people’s diets, outweigh the dangers of soy? It seems that the fifteen or more years of the program would be enough time for the adverse effects of soy to present themselves, but maybe they are attributed to other causes.
Are there organizations that are aware of correct dietary principles that successfully seek to alleviate hunger? I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this. Feeding the poor seems to be a tricky business. For example, our local Meals on Wheels program provides meals that are 100 percent processed (canned stew, canned vegetables, boxed mashed potato and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!). I think it might be better for our dear elderly to eat nothing. I would like, as a start, to get real butter into the meals but the first work will be educating the local administrators of the program on the health benefits of butter and the dangers of margarine. So many folks seem to think that any calories are better than none. This may be true to a point, but there must also be a point where it stops being true.
Cassandra Peterson
Frazier Park, CA
Editor’s Response: You are right, there are so many dilemmas in food giveaway programs, especially when unhealthy foods are promoted by sincere and dedicated individuals. Possibly on the very short term the benefits of a soy-based food could provide needed calories to prevent starvation, but the long-term effects can be devastating. How much better to become involved in programs, such as Heifer International, that give domestic animals, which provide long-term good nutrition such as eggs and milk. For food programs in the U.S., it is obvious that they mirror the conventional attitudes about food. We can’t really suggest any solutions except for each of us to share home cooked food with the elderly to whom we are close.
VEGAN CHALLENGE
I thought you might like to see this article I wrote for the June/July issue of the Wedge Co-op Newsletter. (The Wedge is the largest single-store natural foods co-op in the country.) It’s a comment on Oprah’s “vegan challenge,” and it has generated a lot of drama here in Minneapolis. www.wedge.coop/newsletter/june-july-2011/my-vegan-challenge-to-oprah
The vegan community was enraged after the print and online newsletters came out and sent lots of hateful, angry email to the Wedge (and to me) filled with vicious, unhinged-sounding rants demanding the article be removed from the website. The Wedge panicked and took my article down from the website and replaced it with an apology to the vegan community.
Then the Traditional Foods group here went on their own campaign and sent a lot of emails to the Wedge in support of the article. I met with the General Manager of the Wedge (who didn’t know the article had been taken down) and pointed out that rational people accept that there are viewpoints different from their own; only radicals insist that all other voices be silenced. She reposted the article and took the apology to the vegans down. There is now a note following my article saying that a vegan nutritionist will provide a response to my article in the next newsletter. It will be the cover story.
I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the article. I find it interesting that the vegetarians who emailed me were generally positive, with comments like “thanks for pointing out what I need to pay attention to.” None of the vegans I heard from were able to engage in civil discourse— their emails were insulting to me, told me to stop spreading lies, that I should be arrested, that I’m an idiot, and so forth. I see this as proving my point: without enough B12 and cholesterol, a person’s thinking becomes very rigid and black-and-white; they become unable to make the neurotransmitters that support healthy moods and as a result feel persecuted and angry all the time.
I’ve been practicing holistic nutrition for fifteen years, and in my practice I’ve seen many recovering vegans. I’ve seen their personalities go from angry and depressed to much more open and whole again with the addition of healthful animal protein and fats to their diets. I myself was vegan for two years in my early twenties and had the same experience.
The article (a slightly longer, unedited version) is also posted on my website at www.jennette-turner.com/publications.cfm?id=17.
Jennette Turner
Minneapolis, Minnesota
A TURNAROUND
In seven months my now eightythree- year-old father has gone from being bed-ridden at the Chicago area’s Northwest Community Hospital for ten days with no appetite and a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and then kidney failure, to a man who walks his dog roughly four blocks every day. He daily ingests raw milk, raw cream, raw butter and raw eggs from Fresh-from-the-Farm Co-op in Lemont, and has decided he needs to start eating raw beef along with his grass-fed liver and onions. Last week we played thirty-six holes of golf in warmish weather. He already prepares his own beet kvass. Recently, I taught him how to make kimchi and chicken stock, and left him with more than ten quarts of the latter, which he was already sipping every morning.
I have never seen my father this teachable or eager to learn about food as medicine. While hitting bottom probably helped, I credit the work of WAPF for his turnaround, and I am truly grateful for the commitment and sacrifice you have made.
Mark Seevers
San Mateo, California
ANCESTORS
I have just finished listening to the 2010 Conference on MP3. What an incredible value those lectures are! One of my favorite lectures was by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez. Rather practically, he suggested that we would be well served to eat the foods of our ancestors. If your ancestors came from Hawaii, a diet low in fat and meat and high in fruit would be a good choice. But if your ancestors came from Alaska, you would need a lot of animal fat and meat. The Mediterranean Diet would be a great diet for you, if your family came from the Mediterranean. The Chinese diet; good if you’re from China. Which made me wonder: what did my ancestors eat?
My grandma turned ninety this year. She grew up on a farm in Holland, and she and my Grandpa immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1950s. She lives alone, in her own house, and is still “sharp as anything” (as mother reports). I wrote and asked her what they ate when she was growing up. Here’s her reply:
“As far as I can remember, yes, we drank milk from the cow. Bread for breakfast and for supper, potatoes, vegetables for dinner. We ate meat we slaughtered, a pig mostly, so plenty of bacon. Every dinner my mother would fry bacon and put the fat in a small bowl that was placed in the center of the table so everybody could dip his or her potato in it to eat.
“Bread we must have bought because I cannot remember that we baked it. Cheese my father made, especially during the war. We had chickens, a vegetable garden, and fruit trees. We made sauerkraut in a big tub, which was white cabbage sliced and a big rock on top. In the long run it became sauerkraut. We had raspberries and gooseberries. I cannot remember if we drank goat milk. During the war we slaughtered every calf that was born. Otherwise the Germans took them.”
As a fledgling small farmer, I read this in amazement; I am my great grandmother! I save the bacon drippings and fry the boys’ potatoes in them! I drink milk from the cow, keep chickens and grow vegetables. I have fruit trees and raspberries (hopefully productive one day). I make sauerkraut! My sons are eating the diet of at least two of their eight great-grandparents. May they live into their nineties and beyond and tell stories of their mother, who made sauerkraut and bacon.
Amy Lykosh, Chapter Leader
Albemarle County, Virginia
Editor’s Response: Thank you for sharing the story of your grandmother. Just one point of clarification: the diet of Hawaiians was not low in fat because it included pork and coconut oil.
ARRIVED JUST IN TIME
I would like to thank the Weston A. Price Foundation from the bottom of my heart. Your Spring 2011 issue arrived just in time to resolve a serious health problem that I have. As I pondered the results from my January doctor’s visit it became obvious that I had a liver problem, but I had no clue what it might be. Sadly this fact had completely slipped by my doctor. Then I saw it in black and white, in a sidebar in Chris Masterjohn’s article on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: that a fatty insulin-resistant liver loses the ability to suppress the synthesis of glucose. Bingo! Give that man a cigar!
Actually, I was not at all surprised to find information like this in Wise Traditions. I have been anticipating, receiving and devouring issues for nearly ten years. The journal has consistently provided articles of the highest quality information that is not easily obtained elsewhere.
Dave Bjork
Maplewood, Minnesota
RAW MILK TO THE RESCUE
I am a mother to five wonderful healthy children ranging from sixteen years old down to fourteen months. I am writing you about my youngest son, Elijah. He was born last June at a robust nine pounds. I am a believer of extended breastfeeding and I planned to nurse him as long as he wanted to as I had with my previous children. He latched on quickly after birth, but right away the first twenty-four hours he didn’t seem satisfied so I supplemented with formula, just one ounce. But that ounce became more frequent and supplementation became necessary several times a day. My body had gone from adrenal fatigue into hypothyroidism during this pregnancy, and I didn’t know that this illness causes a decrease in milk supply. By March of this year, I had fully weaned Elijah so that I could take herbs to support my body.
I didn’t know about the Weston A. Price Foundation until April of this year. When I discovered your materials, I immediately searched for a source of raw milk, as I was really starting to worry about Elijah. His weight wasn’t budging past 22.4 pounds, which he reached by the end of January. His weight remained the same and he had stayed in the same sized clothing for the previous six months. Finally I found a source of beautiful raw milk from grass-fed, happy cows. I started him slowly on it and combined it with the pasteurized goat milk I had been giving him already (mixed with formula). For the past three weeks or so he has been drinking a combination of raw kefir, raw milk, raw cream, and recently an addition of a raw egg yolk in his bottles. He loves this milk, it is nearly all he craves and I give him as much as he wants. I am happy to report that he has gained one pound already! He is now 23.6 pounds!
He is sleeping so much better now too, all through the night, and he takes three naps each day. I feel that the amount he is sleeping indicates that his body is healing and growing.
I am very thankful for this source of information— thank you to everyone who volunteers to spread the truth about real milk and real food. This may have been a life-saving change for my son. I don’t know what was going on in his little body, but obviously he wasn’t thriving, he was just existing. Also, one of the foods he really enjoys right now is liver, something I never would have fed my son if I hadn’t searched on the WAPF site.
I drive three hours round trip each Friday evening to buy this milk, and I will continue to do so until our family has our own acreage and cow. I would like to encourage everyone with young children to find a source of real, healthy milk—there is no other supplement or food that has made such a radical change in the health of any of my children. Owning a cow will be a major responsibility and change for us, but weighing the options, it is a no-brainer. This is necessary, not optional for us.
Name Withheld
Alberta, Canada
AN INTERESTING BOOK
Recently, when given a copy of What We Eat Today, by Michael and Sheilagh Crawford (1972), which someone had picked up from library discards, I was fascinated. Here were more accounts of primitive African tribes like those Dr. Price studied. For example, the Hadza were isolated hunters and gatherers who were in good health when other, less isolated tribes were suffering famine. Other tribes were described with nutritional problems. The bow-legged El Molo people lived almost entirely on fish. They had severe calcium deficiency complicated by excess phosphorus. The fish bones were not used. Generations before, they had access to other foods by trading, but aggressive neighbors had restricted them to an isolated shore of an alkaline lake.
The Buganda tribe had become wealthy by producing and exporting plantain bananas. This was also their staple food. They could afford to buy a variety of foods, but for their children, feeding them plantain seemed enough. That led to strange situations, such as Mercedes-driving parents seeking medical help for their children afflicted with kwashiorkor. And I thought that was a disease of poverty!
The Crawfords did various studies showing both grazing and carnivore animals had a more varied diet than we might have guessed. The authors used evidence from lions, antelope, primates and others to show the need for variety in diet, with the necessity of protein and “structural” fats. Fats are needed for cell structure and other functions, but the authors saw less need for saturated fat, and lamented the excess found in modern grain-fed meats.
Uffe Ravnskov’s new book Ignore the Awkward explains how the cholesterol myths are kept alive. Some history of that is shown by how easily the Crawfords accepted Ancel Keys’ condemnation of saturated fats and cholesterol as a cause of heart disease. They even denounced coconut oil. Few of that generation (or now) were properly wary.
Ira Edwards
Medford, Oregon
SURPRISED
I was quite surprised that John and Jessica Moody gave a “thumbs down” review to Timothy Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Incredible Sex and Becoming Super human. Quite frankly I think he should be a poster boy for the Weston A. Price Foundation. He advocates eating saturated fat (page 147), eating eggs (page 90), consuming grass-fed, hormone and antibiotic-free beef, taking vitamin D3 and eating fermented cod-liver oil and butterfat (page 258). Ferriss describes the Pottenger study comparing the consumption of raw milk and raw meat (page 537) and he discourages the consumption of soy. Yes, he may be a bit overstimulated, but at least he is honest about his addiction to Diet Coke.
I think this book introduces people to the practical dietary principles encouraged by the Weston A. Price Foundation in a positive way. In addition, his emphasis on simple exercises provides a much-needed element for an overall healthy lifestyle, which includes those dietary principles; the sedentary lifestyle of so many of our modern society simply does not make appropriate use of the calories consumed in a diet rich in fat. Isolated populations eating the WAPF diet were engaged in hard physical labor. The lack of information about food preparation should not be considered an omission as this is not a cookbook—hence the title. Had he advocated a sedentary life of eating butter and cheese I don’t think this book would be as wildly popular. I am recommending this book with wild enthusiasm to my patients.
Carol Hopson, DC
Washington, DC
CELL PHONE RADIATION
It is a very old saying that a person who is willing to be admonished will become wise. I am not overly good at being admonished myself. However, Tim Boyd’s review of Disconnect: The Truth About Cell-Phone Radiation by Devra Davis reminds us that we should be ready to be admonished. It is pointed out that many new inventions prove to be quite harmful even though they often receive at first glowing approval from “all the experts.”
Why do we so readily accept so many harmful practices into our society? Why do we tend to have a blithe unconcern about plastics, DDT, automobiles, and cellphones? And why does our blithe acceptance acquire such a strong hold on us?
Well, these inventions provide us with pleasant benefits! Which we like! And the true cost is conveniently obscured or postponed; we can even pretend it doesn’t exist. But as soon as we start to listen to the quiet voice of reason, it means we have to consider giving up our pleasant benefits; we also then have to admit that the “experts” we have touted were wrong and that we were wrong.
Giving up pleasant benefits and admitting we are wrong are two things we hate to do. How much easier and nice to do neither—a course of action we frequently take.
The “experts,” of course, are just as human as we are. They like pleasant benefits and they don’t like to be wrong. Many of the “experts,” in addition, are the very people who invented and promulgated the ideas in question, while reaping considerable social and financial rewards. They stand to be turned from heroes to goats if public opinion changes.
And so, time and time again, rather than provide an ounce of prevention or nip a problem in the bud, we choose that we (or our children) must try later to find the pound of cure. Very often the cure is far more than a pound, perhaps a ton, or—sometimes—only the long, very long, passage of time can heal our errors.
As to the particular subject in question here, the cellphone, should we reduce our exposure by using a headset or speaker mode or by keeping the cellphone out of our pocket? No. Clearly the best thing to do is get rid of it and not get another one. The cost is far too high. We got along very well—just a little while ago—without them.
David Ellis
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
COCONUT AND PHYTIC ACID
I’m writing in regard to the article written by Ramiel Nagel titled “Living with Phytic Acid” (Spring 2010). In the article there are references to the phytic acid content of coconut. Since the publication of this article people have been asking me whether they should soak coconut or coconut flour to reduce the phytic acid.
Phytic acid occurs in nuts and seeds in two forms—phytic acid and phytic acid salts [Reddy, NR and Sathe, SK (Eds.) Food Phytates. CRC Press, 2001]. Both are generally referred to as “phytates.” Together, these two compounds make up the total percentage of phytates reported in various foods. However, they do not possess the same chelating power. So the chelating effect of the phytates in corn, wheat, or soy are not the same as those in coconut. You cannot predict the chelating effect based on total phytate content alone.
The mineral-binding effect of the phytates in coconut is essentially nonexistent. It is as if coconut has no phytic acid at all. In a study published in 2002, researchers tested the mineral binding capacity of a variety of bakery products made with coconut f lour. Mineral availability was determined by simulating conditions that prevail in the small intestine and colon. The researchers concluded that “coconut flour has little or no effect on mineral availability.” (Trinidad, TP and others. The effect of coconut flour on mineral availability from coconut flour supplemented foods. Philippine Journal of Nutrition 2002;49:48-57). In other words, coconut flour did not bind to the minerals. Therefore, soaking or other phytic acid-neutralizing processes are completely unnecessary.
Soaking has been suggested as a means to reduce the phytic acid content in grains and nuts. Some suggest coconut flour should also be soaked. To soak coconut flour doesn’t make any sense. The coconut meat from which the flour is made, is naturally soaked in water its entire life (12 months) as it is growing on the tree. To remove the meat from the coconut and soak it again is totally redundant. After the coconut meat has been dried and ground into flour, soaking it would ruin the flour and make it unusable. You should never soak coconut flour.
In the tropics coconut has been consumed as a traditional food for thousands of years. Those people who use it as a food staple and regard it as “sacred food,” do not soak it or process it in any way to remove phytates. It is usually eaten raw. This is the traditional method of consumption. They apparently have not suffered any detrimental effects from it even though in some populations it served as their primary source of food.
Would you please post this message with the article so readers will have a fuller understanding of coconut and phytic acid?
Bruce Fife, ND
Colorado Springs, Colorado
CRAVINGS
Regarding the article “Why We Crave” (Spring 2011), my experience has been that people can get cravings not only with a diet of too many carbs, but also too few of them. I don’t believe we are all the same metabolically, but rather that some of us need more protein and fat and some need more carbs.
I did the GAPS diet (very high fat, protein, lots of veggies and no rice, potatoes or grains of any kind) for six months last year and felt horrible for the first week. Then I had good energy and felt well for three or four months. But after that initial improvement, I started to get more tired, with lower energy and generally slid backwards.
I went off the diet and added back some healthy carbs like sprouted millet, quinoa, corn, brown rice, potatoes and yams. I notice that if my meal contains one of those along with my fat and protein, I don’t crave anything sweet. But, if I eat a meal that has none of those good carbohydrates, I will be starving soon after the meal and will be having cravings for sugar and other sweet stuff. I think we all really need to experiment to find what is right for our bodies.
Leslie Manookian Bradshaw
Ketchum, Idaho
FLUORIDE STUDIES
The first and only state-of-the-art, world-class scientific collection and analysis of the studies of fluoride’s adverse health effects was conducted by National Academy of Science (NAS), the quasi-federal governmental branch with unbiased scientific expertise. Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPAs Standards by NAS, 2006, can be read without charge at www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11571
NAS explains its instructions from EPA not to address water fluoridation: EPA’s Safe Water Drinking Standards (SWDA) do not authorize adding fluoride, but rather identify the maximum amount of contaminant allowable before enforceable removal for public safety.
In switch-and-bait and twisted logic, pro-fluoride folks interpret this to allow adding heavy metal- and radioactive- contaminated non-pharmaceutical hydrofluorosilicic acid by referring to testing and standards developed by industry trade association, NSF, and product manufacturers that magically sanitize known harmful toxins as safe— only on paper. Public Health displays its self-serving bias from discovering and promoting water fluoridation for sixty years. Public Health’s policy is corrupted.
The corporate practice involves solving their too corrosive, toxic industrial fluoride waste problem that can’t be dumped on land, in streams, lakes, or oceans, or into the air with “dilution is the solution to pollution.”
Would you trade your teenage son’s life to fatal osteosarcoma for dental benefits available through other alternatives? Would you harm newborns on formula? Would you trade dental benefits for harm to outdoor workers, athletes, diabetics, kidney patients, arthritic patients, broken hips of elderly women, and thyroid patients? These trade-offs were made by decision-makers who didn’t read the original source material—the NAS fluoride report. They relied on distorted secondary recommendations. Zero is the only safe level for formula-fed infants and kidney dialysis. Infants are not expendable. Scientific thinking requires a ban on water fluoridation.
Susan Michetti
Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin
ANCESTORS
“if your ancestors came from Alaska, you would need a lot of animal fat”
Unless you’re as active as they were, that amount of fat would be harmful for you.