The Fattening, Dumbing Down & Poisoning of America
Written by Nancy Deville
Reviewed by June Milligan, MEd, CCHt |
This book is a provocative must-read for anyone interested in health and wellness, because it reveals the “why” behind the mystery of America’s health crisis. Nancy Deville, bestselling author, has painstakingly researched the ugly realities of our factory-food industry, and in doing so, exposes how real food is altered to become the toxic substances we eat every day. These substances have a cumulative effect in our bodies, and although we may or may not have a reaction to them today, we will most certainly have a negative reaction in the future if we keep eating this stuff.
These factory-foods and US factory-farm practices are causing obesity, degenerative and autoimmune diseases such as lupus, heart disease, Type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Type II diabetes as well as cancer and accelerated aging. Also caused by our factory-food habits are ADD, ADHD, insomnia, exhaustion, depression, panic disorders, rage, agitation, anorexia nervosa, bulimia and lack of sex drive.
That many girls reach puberty at 8 or 9 years old, that many boys are becoming feminized by the hormones and substances in their food, and that Americans have been steadily shrinking in height since WWII is a direct result of our factory-food diet. Heart attacks were unknown before 1900, indeed the first recorded heart attack occurred in 1926. Today heart disease kills 700,000 Americans each year. Since 1900 our food habits have changed dramatically. We are the richest nation, and the fattest and the sickest nation. Something’s wrong here. What has changed most dramatically? Our natural way of eating and living has become industrialized.
The author explains how real food is broken down into its basic components in laboratories and factories, by using heat and chemical solvents. These components are then mixed with colored dyes, preservatives, synthetic vitamins and hundreds of other substances. The industry then promises good health, beauty and satisfaction, but because of the processing and additives, these factory-foods actually lack the life-sustaining nutrients necessary to maintain healthy metabolic processes. The end products of these food experiments are foreign and toxic to our bodies. Rather than feeling satisfied by these low-nutrition products, the resulting “hysterical” hunger provokes us to want even more of them, because we continually feel unfulfilled. We feel dissatisfied because we are nutritionally stressed.
Real foods contain the perfect ratios of naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids and fatty acids necessary to maintain healthy metabolic processes. This perfect ratio cannot be duplicated by food manufacturers. For instance a raw apple has over 4000 micro-nutrients. Taking them apart chemically while adding other substances and calling the result a health bar is simply ridiculous. The process destroys the nutrition.
While being nutritionally malnourished, we’re getting fatter and fatter because of the continuous ingestion of empty calories contained in substances called food that our bodies don’t know what to do with. Consequently, many of these toxic substances are immediately stored in our fat cells, just to get them out of the bloodstream. Fat cells don’t multiply; they just get bigger. So we are now a nation of fat, malnourished people; both children and adults are experiencing an epidemic of degenerative and autoimmune diseases which doctors cannot cure, while the diet and drug industries reap record profits from our factory-food habits. However, changing from factory-food to real food can and does cure most of these problems.
Look in your pantry. It won’t take long to find that most of what’s in there has “high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)” among the first ingredients. Look at the labels on most boxed, bagged, canned or bottled food products in your supermarket. Most contain HFCS. So what is that, why is it bad for us and why don’t they just use sugar?
HFCS is highly addicting manmade sugar and it’s much cheaper for food processors to use than sugar. Eighty percent of HFCS is extracted from genetically modified corn and is made using fermentation, fungus and chemicals. Like sugar, fructose has no nutritional value, and so it must rob your body of nutrients in order to be metabolized. The introduction of HFCS parallels a 47% spike in Type II diabetes and an 80% increase in obesity in that same time period. Since it permeates so many foods, and we consume them all day long, HFCS contributes to “hysterical hunger” (addiction) like no other food additive on the market.
People often think they’re engaging in “emotional eating” when actually they’re suffering from factory food pathology. The HFCS we constantly ingest causes a prolonged neurotransmitter imbalance. This causes us to crave more. When we eat HFCS our brains are permanently on code red, so that we either act out our anxiety or crash if we don’t get our sugar fix, while our cells are desperately crying out for real nutrition, for whole food.
What about aspartame, the sugar substitute? Well, that’s an amino acid that excites brain cells to death. Healthy Beginnings reviewed Dr. Blaylock’s book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills in September 2007. Excitotoxins (both aspartame and MSG) are considered the central mechanism for most neurological diseases, but the effects may take years or even decades to manifest. One of the components of aspartame actually turns into formaldehyde when it reaches 86°F in your body. The truth is known, so why were these toxins approved by the FDA?
In the case of aspartame, after many studies proving the substance unsafe, and through a combination of sloppy science, intrigue, self-interest, ambition, greed and politics, the FDA finally okayed it. The fact that Donald Rumsfeld was president of G.D. Searle (the developer of aspartame) at the time didn’t hurt. Those folks who hop back and forth between government and industry are perfectly poised to use their contacts in government to further their industry agendas. Plus the FDA has been proven over many years to be both inept and corrupt. The government agency which is supposed to protect America’s food and drug supply is actually doing just the opposite.
Look in your pantry and see how many drinks and processed foods there are containing aspartame. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, people who consume aspartame on a consistent basis may look forward to: anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma, brain cancer, chronic fatigue, depression, insomnia, memory loss, migraines, numbness of extremities, seizures, tachycardia, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss and weight gain. Since the introduction of aspartame in the 1970s, the incidence of brain tumors has risen exponentially. The original studies by the G.D. Searle Company found a 47% increase in brain tumors in rats exposed to aspartame, and yet the firm still marketed it. Searle was later purchased by Monsanto Chemical, and is still selling as much aspartame as possible.
One of the biggest mysteries regarding obesity today is that some people become obese on normal amounts of food. Studies on MSG and aspartame in mice found that test subjects and offspring are shorter than normal and become obese on normal amounts of food. What’s even worse is that these substances cause serotonin to dip, the neurotransmitter that gets you high on life! Without enough serotonin in your brain, you’re into doom and gloom plus carb craving!
Death by Supermarket also exhaustively researches soy myths, isoflavone supplementation, how different kinds of fatty acids affect our bodies, as well as myths about milk and dieting. Nancy Deville writes in an easy-to-understand style and her book is footnoted throughout. There is an extensive index, so you can probably find the definitive research on any symptom or condition you wish. Given the domination of our food supply by agri-business and multi-national food manufacturers, it is imperative that we take control of what our family eats. The alternative is a witch’s brew of diseases, ailments and painful conditions.
Nancy Deville says, “Each one of us must conquer our resistance to change. We must face off every single day with the resistance that makes us want to succumb to the seductive siren call of the food, diet and drug industries. What else is worth fighting for, if not your health and happiness, and especially that of your children?” This book should definitely be a part of your family library. The time to start educating your kids is now.
See the book for voluminous references.
For more info contact June Milligan at 775-786-9111 or june@joyfulchanges.com, specializing in increasing awareness and eliminating emotional blocks.
