Never Be Sick Again (23 page)

Commercial milk products are contaminated with bacteria. Government regulations state that after pasteurization milk should contain no more than 20,000 bacteria per milliliter. Out of twenty-five milk samples analyzed by
Consumer Reports,
seven samples had in excess of 130,000 bacteria per milliliter; one sample had almost 3,000,000; and other samples had too many bacteria to count! When you consider the toxins produced by these bacteria, combined with the toxins already present from agricultural and industrial sources, why would anyone still believe cow milk is good for infants and children?

Cynthia and Tom were familiar with the problems of bacterial contamination, but they, like most people, had almost no knowledge of the problems with mold. Not that mold problems are new: Stories from the Middle Ages tell of whole villages racing around in hallucinogenic madness after being poisoned by a type of mold, ergot, that grows on rye. Ergot produces a neurotoxin that poisons the brain and central nervous system. These sick people would sometimes go to a local monastery where the monks would take them in and pray for them—and they would be cured! How? The monasteries were built on better land at the tops of hills, whereas the farmers lived in the lowlands. When the monks harvested their grain on the hills, it was drier than the farmers' grain in the wet lowlands, hence less moldy. When the sick farmers ate uncontaminated grains, they became well. The bizarre behavior of children in Salem, thought to be witchcraft, now is thought to have been cause by ergotism. Although we do not run around in hallucinogenic madness today, at least not from food mold, the problem of mold in the food supply persists.

Molds can develop if crops are moist when harvested or stored. Food often spends weeks in the distribution process and becomes moldy by the time it reaches the store, even if it was not contaminated when harvested. Food has further opportunity to mold in your kitchen. Fresh, living plants protect themselves from mold growth (just as we humans have an immune system to protect ourselves from disease), but as food ages and dies, molds grow. People eat these moldy foods (especially when the mold is not visible), unaware of the toxic loads they put on their bodies. Worse, many people have become allergic to molds, causing not only a toxic exposure but also a toxic allergic reaction. In fact, people allergic to molds are often fine when they eat a freshly harvested berry or grape but suffer an allergic reaction when eating the same foods purchased in a grocery store. If you believe that a food is moldy, do not smell it. Inhaled mold causes serious health problems. Wrap the suspect food and dispose of it carefully.

Mycotoxins (toxins produced by molds) can injure and kill cells, and they are known causes of cancer, especially liver cancer. Because knowing the level of mold contamination in a particular food is difficult, the best approach is to avoid or minimize consumption of foods prone to becoming moldy, such as corn, nuts, grapes, raisins and all dried fruits, berries, beer and other fermented foods, and cheeses. Bottled apple juice frequently is moldy. Apple juice drinkers are so accustomed to its taste that they fail to recognize the presence of this toxin.

If you bite into a nut and it tastes bad, spit it out. It is toxic. If there is any visible mold on any part of a food, throw the entire food away. Don't just cut off the mold. When a mold infection takes place, foods naturally protect themselves by producing antimold toxins that are also toxic to you. Antimold toxins are produced throughout the food, not just the part you cut off. In general, susceptible products such as fresh berries must be purchased in season, freshly harvested from local growers; otherwise they are too old and too moldy—even if you cannot see the mold. I observe people in my local health food store purchasing a basket of “fresh” berries that already have visible mold. Obviously, they have no idea of how poisonous that is.

One type of mold that grows on grains and nuts (particularly corn, peanuts, walnuts and pistachios) produces a mycotoxin called aflatoxin, which is known to cause cancer. Although our government tries to regulate aflatoxin levels, highly contaminated crops are constantly finding their way into our food supply. The chilling reality is that aflatoxin is most commonly found in some of the foods that we most frequently feed to our children—corn flakes, other corn products, peanuts and peanut butter.

Some Cooking Methods Can Create Toxins

Once we obtain high-quality foods, we still must prepare them properly. The first step in nontoxic food preparation is to wash or peel foods in order to remove agricultural chemicals, bacteria and molds. Waxed foods (such as most cucumbers, eggplant, turnips and apples) definitely should be peeled, because the wax often is covering surface residues of pesticides and fungicides that are applied before the wax is applied; also, questions abound about the safety of some of the waxes. For foods that cannot be peeled, washing under running water for a minute or two does a relatively good cleaning job; using a pure, liquid castile soap (a mild soap made from olive oil and sodium hydroxide) cleans even better. For foods like lettuce, discard the outer layers and wash the leaves separately. Rinsing briefly in a vinegar solution lowers bacteria levels.

Few people are going to eat 100 percent of their diet raw (I eat about 80 percent of mine raw), but whenever you choose to eat a raw food in place of a highly cooked or processed one, you obtain better nutrition and less toxic exposure. Cook foods lightly. Ideally, food should not be cooked at temperatures higher than boiling water or steam. Foods change fundamentally when they are cooked; they can become more toxic, less nutritious and even more difficult to digest.
Avoid browned or charred foods,
which are highly toxic.
Unfortunately, many Americans have developed a taste for charbroiled, toasted or barbecued foods, which develop mutagens that contribute to cancer.

When food is heated above 375 degrees (as it usually is in toasting, frying, grilling, broiling and barbecuing), a number of toxic compounds can be produced, including heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs). HAAs are among the most powerful carcinogens ever discovered, and even minute amounts of them can damage your DNA.

The rule of thumb is that the higher the temperature and the longer the cooking time, the more HAAs are formed. Thus, medium rare is safer than well done, and blackened foods are absolutely not acceptable. If ever I am served food that is black, I cut off the blackened parts. Even toast is dangerous. Experiments at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory showed that a well-toasted piece of bread had 20 percent of the cancer-causing activity of a well-done hamburger. Dosage and frequency are the problems; many people eat several slices of toasted bread or bagel every morning for breakfast, which is like laying out a welcome mat for cancer.

Microwaves: A Fast Track to Trouble

Cooking food is not a good idea, especially at high temperatures, but cooking in microwave ovens may be even worse. While not browning or blackening food like conventional cooking, microwaving changes the chemistry of food fundamentally, lowering nutritional content and producing unique toxins. A lot more goes on inside a microwave than just making things hot. Microwaves “zap” food with enormous amounts of energy—enough to break apart water molecules and cause them to react with the food in ways they would not do otherwise. These reactions create a lot of strange, new molecules that are unnatural to the human body; some of them are toxic and carcinogenic. Research in Switzerland, the former Soviet Union and the United States all suggest that eating microwaved food may promote certain types of cancers, hormone imbalances, lymphatic disorders, digestive disorders, immune and blood abnormalities, emotional problems, permanent brain damage, and even heart disease.

In 1992, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, volunteers who ate microwaved food experienced decreased hemoglobin content of their blood and an increased white cell count. Thus, microwaved food decreases the amount of oxygen available to our cells and stresses the immune system. Also, microwaves have been demonstrated to damage nutrients. Research at the Institute of Radio Technology at Kinsk, in the former Soviet Union, found that microwaves reduce the nutritional content of food by 60 to 90 percent. When reheating food, use the stovetop or oven. Modern foods are already nutrient deficient. Why make them worse by using a microwave?

Use the right cookware. The best pots and pans are those made of glass or ceramics such as Corning Ware. Other materials interact with foods and introduce some level of toxins into the food. Stainless steel contains nickel—both an allergen and a carcinogen. A study in the
Journal of the American
Dietetic Association
found that toxic chemicals from stainless steel pots, including nickel, iron and chromium, enter food during cooking. Aluminum—from pots, pans and aluminum foil—is another toxic contaminant. Teflon coatings on cookware also present problems, especially when such cookware is heated to higher temperatures.

Of course, not all meals come from your own kitchen. Americans eat an enormous percentage of food at restaurants. Making optimal food choices when eating at restaurants is almost impossible. However, with care in menu selection, you can usually do fairly well. As a rule of thumb, upscale restaurants usually have fresher and better prepared foods, while fast-food restaurant offerings are more toxic and less nutritious. Many restaurants do not even “cook” for you; they merely serve prepared and processed foods that are reheated (perhaps in a microwave, so be sure to ask).

Very few restaurants use high-quality organic meats. Bear this in mind the next time you ponder a menu. Deep-water ocean fish is probably your best choice, but only if it is fresh. Fresh-water fish is likely to be contaminated with toxins, and farmed fish are neither nutritious nor free of toxins. When ordering out, I often select large salads or freshly harvested fish, with vegetables. Many restaurants are willing to make up a vegetarian entrée on request. Avoid anything that is “blackened,” as well as selections containing meat and, particularly, dairy products. Make simple selections, and be able to identify all the ingredients.

Caution: This Water Is
Hazardous to Your Health

In addition to food, water is an essential ingredient for life and good health. Adequate water intake helps rid your body of toxins, both through the kidneys and through sweat. Shockingly, however, in a highly developed nation such as the United States, almost all of the water is toxic; it adds poisons to your body and is unfit to drink.

Toxins from landfill runoff, sewage pollutants, industrial chemicals such as PCBs and vinyl chloride, agricultural runoff (particularly pesticides), leakage from gasoline storage tanks, and other pollutants contaminate our water. Some researchers believe chronic low-level exposure to these chemicals contributes to our cancer epidemic. Even those of us fortunate enough to live near a high-quality water source would probably be disappointed to learn that our local water supplier takes perfectly good water and contaminates it with toxins such as chlorine, fluoride, arsenic and aluminum. Water then travels through municipal and household pipelines, which can add contaminants such as lead, cadmium, copper, asbestos, iron and nickel.

Although these toxins exist in minute amounts, we drink water (or beverages made with water) daily, so we are exposed chronically. This exposure leads to toxic bioaccumulation, cellular malfunction and disease. Minimize tap-water consumption; drink high-quality distilled or spring water (preferably in glass containers to avoid toxins from plastics). Purchase from companies willing to provide you with a chemical analysis of their water. Another alternative is to drink tap water purified by a filter that uses reverse osmosis. Remember that commercial fruit juices and other beverage products are usually made with tap water. Pure water is what your body needs; when you can get it, choose it.

What Is in Your Drinking Water?

How do some of the toxins commonly added to municipal water supplies harm your health? About 80 percent of the drinking water in the United States is chlorinated. Chlorine is an extremely toxic and volatile chemical that reacts with organic matter in tap water to form carcinogenic compounds called trihalomethanes. These compounds bioaccumulate in fatty tissues and are capable of causing genetic mutations, suppressing immune function, and interfering with the natural controls of cell growth. Long-term consumers of chlorinated water have been shown to have higher risks of rectal, bladder, kidney, intestinal, liver, pancreatic and urinary tract cancers, as well as spontaneous abortions. The Department of Health Services in California reports that women who drink bottled or filtered water have substantially lower rates of birth defects and miscarriages compared to women who drink tap water. Just opening the tap to wash your hands releases toxic chlorine fumes that, when breathed, damage your health; taking a shower is many times worse. I use a charcoal filter in my shower to filter out the chlorine and organic pollutants.

Fluoride is more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic, yet we have been conditioned to believe that fluoride is good for us. Presumably, we put fluoride in our water to prevent tooth decay. Although tooth decay has indeed declined worldwide since the 1970s—an event for which fluoride is often wrongly credited—the real reason for the decline remains unknown, because tooth decay has declined at the same rate in countries that do not use fluoride. Most people are unaware that in more than fifty years of testing and widespread use, no one has ever been able to prove that fluoride is either safe or effective, which is why fluoride has never been approved by the FDA. After half a century of use, the FDA still classifies fluoride as an “unapproved new drug.” Once again, we are guinea pigs in a vast medical experiment gone awry. The truth is, fluoridation of drinking water is making us sick, but no one is ready to admit it because of the almost unthinkable legal liability. Do you think it is a coincidence that toothpastes now have toxicity warnings about their fluoride content? Many young children swallow toothpaste, unless supervised by adults.