Part 21 (1/2)
CHANGING ONE'S DIETARY PATTERN is not a search for a perfect diet because the only thing that is perfect is beyond the body-mind complex. The only thing that is perfect is the Truth of G.o.d, in all, as All. We are already imbedded in this perfection except that most of us are not aware of this reality. A healthy diet is an aid in clearing our consciousness and body so that we can be more receptive to the experience of this absolute level of truth. However, it must be remembered that despite all the emphasis and importance I have placed on right diet, one cannot eat ones way to G.o.d. Diet is not the key to spiritual life, but it is a positive helping factor that a.s.sists in opening the door to communion with the Divine.
Besides enhancing our communion with the Divine, an appropriate diet can help us reach stages of health in which we can fully enjoy life and live more youthfully, longer. Diet is not religion or an obsessive form of searching for G.o.d. Diet is simply one part of a balanced, harmonious life that is in attunement with universal laws. As has been mentioned, an appropriate diet can also help bring one into harmony with the social, ecological, and political issues of the planet. Interestingly enough, although coming from a different perspective, this intuitive, individualized dietary approach of conscious eating yields about the same results in terms of total daily calories and body weight as Walford's scientifically approached, calorie-counting diet. With the harmony of wholeness approach, however, you never have to look at a calorie counter.
This conscious eating approach is the reflection of, and contributor to, our state of internal balance and external harmony with ourselves, our society, and our planet. It is part of the unfolding process of being in tune with the primary natural laws of the universe. A healthy diet is most appropriately developed not as a mechanical process separate from our life, but in a full spiritual context of right livelihood, good company, loving our neighbors as our true selves, meditation and/or prayer, and starting each thought, word, and action with love. It is through this perspective that we are best able to develop an individualized diet that reflects the highest state of awareness and is completely appropriate to maximal function in the world.
Transitioning.
IN THE WESTERN, INDUSTRIALIZED, mechanized, left-brained lifestyle of today's world, our relations.h.i.+p with nature has become confused, exploitive, and very fragile. How else could the FDA have approved such an obvious health-destroying process as the irradiation of fresh fruits, vegetables, wheat, spices, herbs, pork, and poultry products as a way of preserving them? This decision of the FDA reflects the extent to which many of us have broken our ties to nature.
What seems normal is abnormal and vice versa. According to an article in the East-West Journal by Becky Gillette and Kate Dumont on Roy Wal-ford's research, fully two-thirds of Americans die from diseases caused by a poor diet. Approximately 1.5 million people died of diet-related disease in 1987. One has the choice to avoid these diet-related diseases by adopting the type of diet that both cures and prevents the chronic degenerative diseases from which so many suffer.
Vegetarians and a vegetarian diet are sometimes considered extreme. And this is true if your goal is to be ”extremely” healthy and feel extremely good. It is difficult to change a dietary pattern, even if it is unhealthy, when it means swimming upstream against social pressure and our old, programmed habits and belief systems. Nevertheless, it is necessary to examine one's programming and be willing to abandon what is no longer appropriate for maintaining one's state of total well-being of body, mind, and spirit. In this unfolding process, one learns to abandon what does not keep one in health and harmony. This gentle approach also helps to guide the rate of transitioning so it is in harmony with the body's physiological changes, the clearing of mind, and the subtle opening of spirit in one's life.
Planning one's own individualized diet and rate of transition requires some artful intelligence in the application of the principles and concepts I have shared. The process is real and basic rather than esoteric. It is a self-discovery process of trial and error to see what works to maintain the experience of the One. The hunger for the Divine can serve as a guiding light behind the appet.i.te and direct one's choice of diet.
The place to start is with one's immediate dietary pattern. This involves learning to eat, by trial and error, the right amount of food that energizes the mind, body, and spirit. This will ideally maintain and enhance the present flow of cosmic energy into the body, thus sustaining the present level of love communion. One aid to the digestive system is to limit one's food intake to a maximum of three meals per day, with only juices or an occasional piece of fruit between meals. The exception to this is if one has a strong fast-oxidizer physiology, or hypoglycemia, which requires frequent snacks until the condition is stabilized or cured. Chewing food well and creating a peaceful, joyful atmosphere in which to eat or digest the food will immediately improve digestion.
Four Transition Stages.
THERE ARE SEVERAL MAJOR STAGES of dietary transition. Each stage may take as little as one season in a yearly cycle. The concept of ”transitioning” allows one to be receptive to the continued progress of one's evolutionary growth, no matter what the time frame. More detail will be provided about these stages in later chapters, but for now it is sufficient to foreshadow this material by way of a brief description of these four dietary stages. Stage one is a transition from all bioacidic foods to natural, whole, organic foods. This means letting go of all processed, irradiated, chemicalized, pesticide-ridden and fungicide-containing, adulterated, fast, and junk foods and other sorts of ”Hostess Twinkie”-type foods. In this stage we also begin to give up red meats.
The second stage is letting go of all flesh foods, such as poultry and fish. It also includes not eating eggs.
Stage three is a vegetarian diet with the inclusion of dairy at the beginning and then moving to an 80% live-food intake by the end.
Stage four is vegetarian without dairy and may be as much as 95-100% live foods by the end. Not eating flesh or any dairy products is not technically defined as a vegan because to be a true vegan means the absolute avoidance of any animal products in the total lifestyle. This includes the avoidance of leather clothing, honey, and gelatin capsules.
Preview of Chapter 21.
THE FIRST CONSCIOUS EATING STAGE is not becoming vegetarian. It is simply becoming conscious of what you are eating, from pesticides to nitrates. It is learning to read labels and ask the right questions to protect yourself. In this stage junk foods and commercially produced foods are given up for the most healthy and cost-effective organic foods. One also gets a chance to look at the viral, bacterial, and parasitic dangers of eating beef and chicken. In this stage, we let go of red meat. The time for action has begun. Are you ready to make this first step in the commitment?
I. Biocidic food II. Protecting yourself from chemicalization A. Major source of pesticide exposure comes from animal foods B. Avoid commercial foods to be safe III. Learning to read labels is good for your health IV. Au naturel- buy organic V. Dangers of eating flesh A. Chemicals in factory-farmed animals.
B. Estrogen-injected animals-problems manifested in people who eat that flesh.
C. Leukemia in children linked to diseased milk.
D. Detrimental effects of fats in the diet.
E. Unhealthy chickens and chicken processing.
Stage One: I Have No ”Beef” with This.
THE FIRST STAGE IN THE TRANSITION PROCESS is mental acceptance and an understanding that a dietary reorientation is necessary. Stage One is a time to begin thinking about the acid-base ratio of the foods one eats and its effect on the body the practice of food combining, regular exercise, and cultivating healthy eating patterns. Eating more fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and raw dairy as the central focus of one's diet is a big departure from the typical American diet, but most everyone finds this new world of health-giving foods exciting and rewarding. After an initial adjustment phase, these foods generally taste better in the long run. Stage One can be considered the first major step in one's gradual re-education and s.h.i.+ft to healthful eating patterns.
This means significantly reducing one's intake of tamasic, health-destroying, biocidic foods. Giving up biocidic foods-processed, commercially grown, fast food and junk foods-means no longer offering oneself up as a sacrificial guinea pig to the pesticide, herbicide, additive, fungicide, food processing, food irradiating, microwaving, fast food, and junk food industries. Stage One eliminates such deleterious foods as white sugar, white bread, candy, TV dinners, soft drinks, any meats that have been treated with nitrites and nitrates, pasteurized milk and cheeses, baked goods containing refined oils, foods containing additives, and prepared foods that have been stored in the refrigerator for more than two or three days.
Actually, almost all cooked foods become biocidic approximately twenty-four hours after preparation. Whether it takes one to four days to become contaminated with bacteria or mold is not the point, for all stored foods have lost their vital energy even if kept in the refrigerator. This is significantly less so if the food is quick-frozen. As early as 1930 Dr. Kouchakoff found that the intake of processed foods so disturbed the white blood cell pattern of the immune system that it looks the same as a white blood cell pattern that is seen with infections. Eating highly processed, nitrate-, pesticide-, and additive-filled meats, like hot dogs and salami, gives the white blood cell pattern that one typically sees with severe food poisoning. Pesticides, herbicides, and additives in the foods have been linked with cancer, weakened immune system, allergies, neurotoxicity, hyperactivity in children, and brain allergies.
Another category of common pathological effects from these toxins is varying levels of neurotoxicity to the brain and rest of the nervous system, which has more subtle symptoms, such as reduced mental functioning, decreased mental clarity, and poor concentration. Although the hard statistics of cancer are mentioned frequently in the discussion of pesticides, increased cancer rates is just one of the most extreme results of toxins in our food and water.
Unless one eats organic fruits and vegetables, one is continually exposed to pesticides. One of the most significant effects of an organic vegetarian diet is the tremendous health benefits of stopping the chronic poisoning from pesticides. In 1985, nearly one thousand people in the western United States and Canada were poisoned by the pesticide Temik in watermelon. People had a variety of reactions, including grand mal seizures, cardiac irregularities, and even several stillbirths. Next the dangers of alar in apples were exposed. In 1987, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that in our lifetime pesticides in American food may cause more than one million additional cases of cancer in the United States. Laurie Mott and Karen Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) reported in the Amicus Journal that each year 2.6 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States and nearly all Americans have residues of the pesticides DDT, chlordane, heptachlor, aldrin, and dieldrin in their bodies. A1987 Environmental Protection Agency Report indicated that because of the ma.s.sive agricultural use of pesticides, at least twenty pesticides, some of which are cancer-causing, have been found in the groundwater of twenty-four states. Between 1982 and 1985, the FDA detected pesticide residues in 48% of the most frequently consumed fresh vegetables and fruits. In 1975, the sixth annual report of the Council on Environment stated that dieldrin, which is five times more potent than the outlawed DDT, was found in 99.5% of the American people, 96% of all meat, fish, and poultry, and in 85% of all dairy products. Dieldrin is one of the most potent carcinogens known. It has caused cancer in laboratory animals at every dosage ever tested, no matter how infinitesimal. Low-level exposure in humans has been known to cause convulsions, liver damage, and destruction of the central nervous system. Fortunately dieldrin was banned in 1974, but who knows how lethal the next new line of pesticides may be. It's a form of American roulette. The drug companies are the only winners.
Dioxin (2,4,5-T), an active component of Agent Orange, is considered by Dr. Diane Courtney, head of the Toxic Effects Branch of the EPA's National Environmental Research Center, to be the most toxic chemical known. According to Diet for A New America, millions of pounds of 2, 4, 5-T have been sprayed on American soil. The EPA has officially recognized that cattle which graze on land sprayed with dioxin acc.u.mulate it in their fat. According to pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein, those who eat beef get a dose of dioxin that has been concentrated as it moves up the food chain. Dioxin has been shown to produce cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and death in lab animals in concentrations as low as one part per trillion. It is no wonder, according to David Steinman in Diet for a Poisoned Planet, that deaths from cancer in this country have risen from less than one percent in the beginning of the nineteenth century to one in four American men and one in five American women today. Although there are other factors besides herbicides and pesticides that play a role in increasing the incidence of cancer, such as nuclear radiation and cigarette smoking, I wonder how much the cancer rate would drop if we stopped actively putting these and all the other pesticides in our food chain. Even if their toxicity is discovered and they are banned, once they have been introduced into the environment, the chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides are extremely stable compounds that do not break down for decades or longer.
I do not think scientists have discovered the full extent of the damage pesticides have already done to the nation's health. The types of cancers that are statistically emerging suggest that they are originating from the specific effects of certain pesticides. According to Diet for a Poisoned Planet, between 1950 and 1985, urinary bladder cancer increased by 51%; kidney and renal pelvis cancer increased by 82%. These types of cancers are directly a.s.sociated with toxins in the drinking water. Testicular cancer, which occurs in significant proportion among farm workers and manufacturers of pesticides, has increased 81%. In 1985, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is linked with pesticide exposure, increased by 123%. The Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health in 1988 estimated that as many as 10,000 cancer deaths annually could be caused from the chemical additives in food. This estimate does not even include pesticides. It is extremely difficult to know the exact percentage of the cancer increase due to pesticides, additives, and other environmental factors in our food, water, and air, but it most likely is significant.
In addition to the single pesticide factor effect which can be directly tested in the laboratory, there is often a more powerful synergistic effect from the multiple use of different toxins working together in the environment. This synergistic effect is difficult to a.s.sess. The c.u.mulative effect of widespread, chronic, low-level exposure to multiple pesticides is only partially understood. One National Cancer Inst.i.tute study found that farmers exposed to herbicides had a six times greater risk than nonfarmers of getting one specific type of cancer. Research at the University of Southern California discovered in 1987 that children living in homes where household and garden pesticides were used had a sevenfold greater chance of developing childhood leukemia. The Amicus Journal article ent.i.tled ”Pesticide Alert” reported that in 1982 a congressional report estimated that 82-85% of pesticides registered for use have not been adequately tested for their ability to cause cancer. In addition, 60-70% of pesticides were not tested for creating birth defects, and 90-93% were not tested for the possibility of causing genetic mutations.
In addition to the absence of single-factor data, there is almost no data to show how these pesticides work when combined. In the Journal of Food Science, one of the few studies on the synergistic effect of pesticides reported that when three chemicals were each tested separately on rats, there was no obvious ill effect. When two of the three chemicals were added together, the health of the rats diminished. When all three were used synergistically, the rats all died within two weeks. This synergistic pesticide porridge of our food and water is probably creating the most overall damage to the health of all living forms in our environment. People who do not use purified water or organic food are exposing themselves significantly to this danger. The lack of available data on the health-destroying effects of pesticide use, both individually and synergistically suggests the EPA has to be regulating more out of ignorance than knowledge. More than no different pesticides were detected in all foods between 1982 and 1985. Of the 25 pesticides detected most frequently in our foods, nine are known to cause cancer. This is a serious situation.
'90s Update on Pesticide Use.
SINCE THE FIRST EDITION OF Conscious Eating, the tide of pesticide and herbicide use has continued to increase rather than ebb. The following data come from a report in Pesticide Action Network published by Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR). In California, which uses 25% of all the pesticides in the US, the trend is toward an increasing use and dependence on toxic pesticides and herbicides. California literally puts hundreds of millions of pounds of chemicals on our crops, soil, water, homes, schools, and work places each year. The environmental protection laws simply are not strong enough. Six and one-half pounds of pesticides per person are used in California, which is more than double the national average of 3.1 pounds per person.
Pesticide use in California increased 31% from 1991 to 1995, a jump from 161 to 212 million pounds per year. The increase occurred primarily in the intensity of pesticides per acre as the number of agricultural acres stayed about the same. The use of cancer-causing pesticides rose 129%-to more than twenty-three million pounds-what is now 11% of the total pesticide use in the state. Use of acutely toxic nerve poisons increased 52% to about nine million pounds. The use of restricted pesticides-those which regularly cause damage to people, crops, and the environment-increased 34% to forty-eight million pounds in 1995. The total volume of carcinogens, reproductive hazards, endocrine disrupters, category I acute systemic poisons, category II nerve toxins, and restricted-use toxins increased 32% between 1991 and 1995. This is approximately seventy-two million pounds, or 34% of the total reported pesticide use. Strawberries and grapes were the two most heavily pesticided crops. Strawberries received about three hundred pounds of active pesticides per acre, and grapes received a total of fifty-nine million pounds of pesticides in 1995.
A report by Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR) shows that 87% of the forty-six California school districts surveyed used highly toxic pesticides in their routine building and lawn maintenance. These forty-six districts serve one and one-half million children. Seventy percent of these school districts used suspected carcinogens; 52% used pesticides that are known to cause birth defects or impair normal mental and physical development; 50% used pesticides suspected of disrupting the human hormonal system; and 54% used nerve toxins. This data was typically unavailable to parents, teachers, and the public. CPR had to use legal counsel to obtain these simple data.