By Dr. Mercola

The consumption of organ meats has fallen out of favor in the West, which may be a mixed blessing. Liver, kidney, heart and other animal organs from organically raised, grass-fed animals are some of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.

Unfortunately, that’s not how most food animals are raised these days. In today’s world of high calorie/high carbohydrate but low nutrient foods, most people would benefit greatly from adding these superfoods back into their diet.

However, I advise against eating organ meats from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The diets, veterinary drugs and living conditions of such animals are not likely to result in healthy organs, so be sure to find out where the organs came from, should you decide to pick some up at your local grocer.

Many traditional cultures and their medicine men—including Native Americans—believe that eating the organs from a healthy animal supports the organs of the eater.

For example, a traditional way of treating a person with a weak heart was to feed the person the heart of a healthy animal. Similarly, eating the brains of a healthy animal was believed to support clear thinking, and animal kidneys were fed to people suffering from urinary maladies.

There are countless reports about the success of these types of traditional practices. We can thank Dr. Weston A. Price for an enormous body of research about the health benefits of traditional diets.¹

The ‘Isaac Newton of Nutrition’

Dr. Weston A. Price² was a Cleveland dentist who has been called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition.” Dr. Price traveled all over the world studying the dietary practices of healthy people from traditional cultures.

What he found was that nearly every culture placed a high value on consuming animals in their entirety, making use of the organs, blood, bones, and everything else—a far cry from Western culinary snobbery, which pretty much limits animal foods to muscle tissue and nothing else.

Traditional preparations involve a good deal of work in terms of cleaning, trimming, soaking, pounding and so on because membranes, blood vessels and other inedible parts must be removed from animal organs before they can be consumed, requiring significant time and labor. Why did they bother with all of this work?

They knew that eating these organs would support the natural functioning of their bodies. And they were right—the nutritional benefits of organ meats are now being confirmed by modern science.

Organ meat is a nutritional powerhouse, loaded with vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other compounds vital to your health. Liver in particular is packed with nutrients, which is why predatory animals eat it first and why it has been so highly prized throughout history.

Unfortunately, organ meats have been unfairly demonized in the West thanks to some persistent dietary myths, including beliefs that animal fat and cholesterol are bad for your health. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Dr. Price, who studied this extensively, found that native cultures who maintained traditional diets—whole foods from plants and animals—had excellent teeth and were free of the chronic diseases plaguing society today. They experienced very little cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, or even birth defects.³ But why? What accounts for such drastic health differences?

Traditional versus Contemporary Diets

When Dr. Price analyzed and compared the nutrient value of foods eaten by traditional versus modern cultures, he found that a traditional diet provided at least four times the water-soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals, and at least 10 times the fat-soluble vitamins, such as A and D.

These fat-soluble vitamins are present only in animal fats—butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils, and foods with fat-rich cellular membranes such as liver and other organ meats. Of course, these are the foods now shunned by Westerners as unhealthful. Is it any wonder that adopting a modern diet spells disaster for your health?

The Offal Truth

The consumable parts of an animal that are not skeletal muscle are called offal, which literally means “off fall,” or the pieces that fall off a carcass when it’s butchered. This includes the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, pancreas and all other abdominal organs, as well as the tails, feet, brains, tongue, and yes, even the testicles.⁴

In the US, the term “organ meats” is more commonly used, and when these parts come from birds, they are usually referred to as giblets.⁵ Sweetbreads refer to the thymus gland or pancreas of a young cow, lamb or pig.

In nature, most animals go straight for the organs of their prey, saving the muscle meats for later. This is because animals instinctively know that organ meats are the densest source of nutrition. In fact, organs are the superfoods of the animal kingdom. This is why “glandulars,”⁶ supplements made from dried tissues of animal organs and glands, pack some powerful therapeutic punches when taken under the guidance of a skilled medical practitioner.

Organ Meats: The Superfoods of the Animal World

Organ meats offer a rich mélange of nutrients your body needs for optimal function, in concentrations hard to find anywhere else. The most significant ones are outlined in the following table.⁷

High quality protein	B complex, including B12 and folate (folic acid)	Minerals, including a highly bioavailable form of iron
Fats (especially omega-3 fats8)	Choline (another B vitamin, important for cell membranes, brain and nerve function, heart health, and prevention of birth defects)9	Trace minerals such as copper, zinc and chromium
Cholesterol10	CoQ10 (essential for energy production and cardiac function; potent antioxidant; animal hearts offer the highest levels of coQ10)	Vitamin D
Vitamin E (circulation, tissue repair, healing, deactivation of free radicals, slowing aging)	Pre-formed vitamin A (retinol)	An unidentified “anti-fatigue factor”
Purines11 (nitrogen containing compounds serving as precursors to DNA and RNA)	Vitamin K2	Amino acids

The Discovery of “Fat-Soluble Activators”

One of Dr. Price’s most significant contributions to nutrition science was the concept of fat-soluble activators, which serve as potent catalysts for mineral absorption. Without them, minerals cannot by used by your body, no matter how plentiful they may be in your diet. Dr. Price was quite ahead of his time—modern research has since validated most of his findings.

Dr. Price identified three primary fat-soluble activators: vitamins A and D, and one he called “Activator X,” because he didn’t know exactly what it was, only that it was present in certain fatty parts of animals (especially the organ meats) that fed on young green growing plants or microorganisms, as well as in oily fish and shellfish. This powerful nutrient is now believed to be vitamin K2, a nutrient that is far more important than most people realize.^{12, 13}

Vitamin D, is required for mineral metabolism, healthy bones, optimal nervous system function, muscle tone, reproductive health, insulin production, and protection from depression¹⁴ and every type of chronic illness, from cancer to heart disease. Vitamin D’s list of benefits keeps growing with each passing year. However, it’s important to realize that these nutrients are dependent on the animal having been raised and fed in a natural manner. As stated by the Weston A. Price Foundation:¹⁵

“The vital roles of these fat-soluble vitamins and the high levels found in the diets of healthy traditional peoples confirm the importance of pasture-feeding livestock. If domestic animals are not consuming green grass, vitamins A and K will be largely missing from their fat, organ meats, butterfat and egg yolks; if the animals are not raised in the sunlight, vitamin D will be largely missing from these foods.”

Vitamin A Myth-Busting

Impressively abundant in organ meats from pastured animals, Vitamin A is a catalyst for multiple biochemical processes. Vitamin A is vital for prevention of birth defects, prevention of infection, hormone production, optimal thyroid function, good digestion, good vision, and healthy bones and blood. Without it, your body cannot utilize protein, minerals and water-soluble vitamins. Vitamin A is also an antioxidant that helps protect you from pollutants, free radicals, and cancer.

Contrary to what many vegetarians believe, the type of vitamin A obtained from plants (carotene) is much different than the animal-derived form. Carotenes from vibrantly colored fruits and vegetable are a great antioxidant and can be converted into true vitamin A in your upper intestine, but many people are unable to convert it, especially if their diets contain insufficient fat.

Dr. Price discovered that the diets of traditional peoples contained at least 10 times more vitamin A from animal sources than found in the American diet of his day. That difference may be even starker now, as his research was done decades ago.

When people began taking synthetic vitamin A supplements, we began to see vitamin A toxicity. But this does not happen with natural vitamin A from real, whole foods. Therefore, the advice to refrain from organ meats during pregnancy is unfounded. It is best to obtain your vitamin A from natural sources like yellow butter, egg yolks, and organ meats.

Please realize that antibiotics, laxatives, fat substitutes and cholesterol-lowering drugs interfere with vitamin-A absorption. Another common myth is that organ meats cause gout. This is a warped, oversimplified misinterpretation of the biochemical processes that lead to gout.¹⁶ Gout results from a buildup of uric acid, which is more a function of insulin resistance related to overconsumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar. Uric acid is a byproduct of your body’s metabolism of dietary sugar—especially fructose.

Excess dietary protein with insufficient dietary fat may also raise your risk for gout. This is why lean meats should not be consumed without adding a healthful fat, and the leaner organ meats (such as the heart and liver) are no exception. The one nutrient most protective against gout is vitamin A, because it helps protect your kidneys—healthy kidneys prevent the buildup of uric acid by excreting it in your urine. Therefore, organ meats actually protect you from gout, rather than cause it.

Liver—Nature’s Most Concentrated Source of Vitamin A

Liver is the most commonly consumed organ meat in the US—and for good reason: it’s one of the most nutrient-dense foods in existence. Liver is held sacred by many African tribes, and practically every cuisine has liver specialties. It simply contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food:¹⁷

• Liver is nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A (retinol)
• It contains an abundant, highly usable form of iron
• Three ounces of beef liver contains almost three times as much choline as one egg
• Liver is one of the best sources of copper, folic acid, cholesterol, and purines
• It also contains a mysterious “anti-fatigue factor,” making it a favorite among athletes

The liver is often described as an organ that “filters” your blood of toxins, which may seem concerning in terms of eating it. In reality, laboratory analysis has proven that liver is actually completely safe for consumption and has no higher concentration of toxins than the rest of the body. This is due to the fact that your liver is not really a “filter,” but more of a chemical processing plant, rendering toxins inert and shuttling them out of your body. If your liver contains large amounts of toxins, so do you! And the same goes for the animals you consume. What this means is, the cleaner the animal whose organs you are consuming, the cleaner your food will be, whether it’s a steak or an organ.¹⁸

IMPORTANT: Know Where Your Meat Comes From

In another article¹⁹ written by a meat processor, Bob Martin explains the differences between products derived from grain-fed animals versus from grass-fed animals. He reports that many grain-finished livers are “condemned,” whereas this does not happen with grass-finished livers. He is very straight in his recommendation to avoid meat and organs coming from animals that are grain-fed or grain-finished, such as those produced by CAFOs.

As stated earlier, it is safest to restrict all of your meats to pastured, or at the very least, grass-finished animals. In the wake of mad cow disease, it is particularly important to consume animals raised on pasture and fed a biologically appropriate diet, which virtually eliminates their risk of mad cow disease, as well as many other dangerous contaminants.²⁰

Recipes and Other Offal Resources

If you haven’t been eating organ meats lately, perhaps you abandoned them because they were thrust upon you as a child, or maybe you’ve never been able to get past their appearance. They look like entrails because they ARE entrails, which are difficult to disguise. You just may have to get over it… for the sake of your health! Fortunately, organ meats don’t have to be the tough, dried out, overcooked liver-and-onions of yesteryear that were more like shoe leather than meat.

Finding good organ meat recipes can be somewhat of a challenge, as they are more of a niche specialty today—but they are out there. In order to make your journey a bit easier, I’ve assimilated a list of resources to perhaps inspire you into trying some new things. The following are merely a starting point—I’m sure you can find others. Paleo recipe websites often have interesting and unique organ meat recipes, and there are an abundance of those. Happy hunting!

• An article called “The Liver Files” on the Weston Price website has great nutrition information about liver, as well as liver recipes from around the world17
• Sally Fallon gives a big thumbs up to a cookbook devoted to organ meats, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, by Fergus Henderson.²¹
• Chris Kresser’s article “How to Eat More Organ Meats” contains nutritional information as well as links to a number of recipes, by organ type.²²
• Chef Chris Cosentino’s website Offal Good is completely devoted to “everything offal” and is an interesting read, including recipes, videos, and offal photos NOT for the faint of heart—but perfect for the culinarily curious! (Chef Cosentino is featured in the video at the top of this article.)
• Huffington Post offers a few select recipes for offal food.²³
• Food & Wine gives some tips for “Nose to Tail Cooking.”
• For the nutritional composition of organ meats, I found a couple of resources. The Self Nutrition Data site is a good resource for comparing nutrient levels of many foods, including organ meats. And an online publication called “Nutritional Composition of Red Meat” from the University of Wollongong (Australia) has charts with all sorts of nutritional data for red meats, including organ meats and wild game.

“The 13 Amazing Health Benefits of Himalayan Crystal Salt,
the Purest Salt on Earth”

(And Why You Want to Avoid Conventional Salt)

Salt is essential for life — you cannot live without it. However, most people simply don’t realize that there are enormous differences between the standard, refined table and cooking salt most of you are accustomed to using and natural health-promoting salt.

These differences can have a major impact on your staying healthy.

If you want your body to function properly, you need holistic salt complete with all-natural elements. Today’s common table salt has nothing in common with natural salt.

Your table salt is actually 97.5% sodium chloride and 2.5% chemicals such as moisture absorbents, and iodine. Dried at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, the excessive heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt.

This Salt Is Over 250 Million Years Old

This is by far the purest salt available on earth and is absolutely uncontaminated with any toxins or pollutants.

Once I learned about it and how beneficial it can be for you, my team and I literally spent nearly two years working on having it brought over to the US.

I thought I would be able to provide this salt last year but to say obtaining this salt is difficult would be an enormous understatement. You see, the suppliers of this salt have no standard infrastructure available and we have to work through people that have no idea of how normal business operates.

The shipment had to go through a number of different countries before we were finally able to import it into the US so you can use it.

Quite truthfully, all the bugs are not worked out in the supply system, and we may sell out of this salt very quickly because of all its incredible benefits — that’s why, if you are interested I encourage you to place your order as soon as possible! If we do sell out this supply early, if our past experience is any predictor of the future it may be 6 months to a year before we are able to have more to sell to you. I have never in my life seen a product that has been this challenging to obtain.

This salt from the Himalayas is known as “white gold.” Together with pure spring water, Himalayan Crystal Salt offers all the natural elements exactly identical to the elements in your body — the very same elements originally found existing in the “primal sea.”

Containing all of the 84 elements found in your body, the benefits of natural Himalayan Crystal Salt include:

1. Regulating the water content throughout your body
2. Promoting healthy pH balance in your cells, particularly your brain cells
3. Promoting blood sugar health and helping to reduce the signs of aging
4. Assisting in the generation of hydroelectric energy in cells in your body
5. Absorption of food particles through your intestinal tract
6. Supporting respiratory health
7. Promoting sinus health
8. Prevention of muscle cramps
9. Promoting bone strength
10. Regulating your sleep — it naturally promotes sleep
11. Supporting your libido
12. Promoting vascular health
13. In conjunction with water, it is actually essential for the regulation of your blood pressure

The Typical Table and Cooking Salt in Your
Grocery Store Has Been ‘Chemically Cleaned’

What remains after typical salt is “chemically cleaned” is sodium chloride — an unnatural chemical form of salt that your body recognizes as something completely foreign. This form of salt is in almost every preserved product that you eat. Therefore, when you add more salt to your already salted food, your body receives more salt than it can dispose of.

This is important as over 90% of the money that people spend on food is for processed food.

Typical table salt crystals are totally isolated from each other. In order for your body to try to metabolize table salt crystals, it must sacrifice tremendous amounts of energy.

Inorganic sodium chloride can keep you from an ideal fluid balance and can overburden your elimination systems.

When your body tries to isolate the excess salt you typically expose it to, water molecules must surround the sodium chloride to break them up into sodium and chloride ions in order to help your body neutralize them. To accomplish this, water is taken from your cells in order to neutralize the unnatural sodium chloride.

This results in a less-than-ideal fluid balance in the cells.

You Are Losing Precious Intracellular Water When You Eat Normal Table Salt

For every gram of sodium chloride that your body cannot get rid of, your body uses 23 times the amount of cell water to neutralize the salt. Eating common table salt causes excess fluid in your body tissue, which can contribute to:

• Unsightly cellulite
• Rheumatism, arthritis and gout
• Kidney and gall bladder stones

When you consider that the average person consumes 4,000 to 6,000 mg of sodium chloride each day, and heavy users can ingest as much as 10,000 mg in a day, it is clear that this is a serious and pervasive issue.

So Why Are Many People Still Using Table Salt?

Because well over 90% of the world’s salt is being used directly for industrial purposes that require pure sodium chloride. The remaining percentage is used for preserving processes and ends up on your kitchen table.

With the use of rigorous advertising, the salt industry is successful in convincing you there are actually health advantages to adding potentially toxic iodine and fluoride to salt. In addition, your table salt very often contains potentially dangerous preservatives. Calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, and aluminum hydroxide are often added to improve the ability of table salt to pour. Aluminum is a light alloy that deposits into your brain — a potential cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

Get Salt as Nature Intended It — Pure Himalayan Crystal Salt

Today’s table and cooking salt is void of the vital trace minerals that make this Himalayan crystal salt so precious. Crystal salt has spent over 250 million years maturing under extreme tectonic pressure, far away from exposure to impurities.

The salt’s unique structure also stores vibrational energy. All of the crystal salt’s inherent minerals and trace elements are available in colloidal form — meaning they are so small your cells can readily absorb them.

The Crystal Salt from the Himalayas does not burden your body as other salts do. It is very difficult for your body to absorb too much crystal salt since there are powerful and effective feedback loops that regulate this process. Natural crystal salt always promotes a healthy balance and does not contribute to high blood pressure like typical table salt.

Crystal Salt’s array of elements forms a compound in which each molecule is inter-connected. The connectedness allows the vibrational component of the 84 trace elements present in the salt to be in harmony with each other and adds to the ability to promote a healthy balance. When it comes to the power of natural salt, nothing compares to Himalayan Crystal Salt. Here’s why:

• It is the highest grade of natural salt.
• Under an electron microscope, crystal salt has a perfect crystalline structure.
• It is mined by hand and hand-washed.
• Crystal salt is immune to electromagnetic fields
• Crystal Salt contains no environmental pollutants.
• There is no limited shelf life and no need for silica packets to prevent clumping.

A New and Different Way to Experience
the Salty-Sweet Goodness of Himalayan Crystal Salt

Not only is Himalayan Crystal Salt far healthier for your body than commercial salt, its taste is unforgettable. Once you try Himalayan salt, I can promise you that you’ll never want to use commercial salt again – I know I don’t.

And here’s a unique way to enjoy Himalayan salt’s slightly sweet-salty goodness with your food…

Featured on several top cooking shows, Himalayan Salt kitchen slabs have become the newest sensation for extraordinary food preparation and presentation.

Measuring a generous 16-1/2 inches by 8 inches, 1-3/4 inch thick and 12.8 pounds, this beautiful translucent pink crystal salt slab serves as a cooking and curing surface, and a lovely way to present chilled foods.

To grill or sauté with your Himalayan Salt Kitchen Slab, simply preheat your slab over a grill or stove and toss on your favorite sliced meats, seafood, vegetables or eggs. The Himalayan crystal salt sears your food to perfection, with a just a light touch of heavenly salty flavor.

Key Minerals in Himalayan Crystal Salt Promote a Healthy Balance in Your Body

Himalayan Crystal Salt is salt in its native form, with all its vibrational energy intact and it helps promote a healthy balance in your body. Promoting balanced electrolytes helps to keep your body in homeostasis — the balance of chemicals that is conducive to the body’s function.

The renowned Frezenius Institute in Europe analyzed the Himalayan Crystal Salt and proved that it has an amazing array of important trace minerals and elements including potassium, calcium and magnesium that help promote a healthy balance by maintaining fluids and replenishing your supply of electrolytes whenever you sweat heavily. (This salt does not supply iodide, a necessary nutrient.)

Himalayan Salt vs. Sea Salt and Rock Salt: A Crystal Comparison

Many people believe sea salt is a healthy alternative to table salt, but this is no longer the case. The oceans are being used as dumping grounds for harmful toxic poisons like mercury, PCBs and dioxin. Reports of oil spills polluting the sea are becoming more frequent. With some 89% of all the sea salt producers now refining their salt, today’s sea salt simply isn’t as healthy as it used to be.

If you were to look into a microscope at sea salt (pictured left), you would see it has irregular and isolated crystalline structures disconnected from the natural elements surrounding them. Thus, however many vital minerals it may contain, they cannot be absorbed by your body unless the body expends tremendous energy to vitalize them. Your body’s net gain is small compared to the great loss of energy.

Because the crystalline structure of crystal salt is balanced (pictured right), it is not isolated from the 84 inherent mineral elements, but is connected to them in a harmonious state. This means the energy content in the form of minerals can be easily metabolized by your body. When you use this salt, it has a vital energetic effect. Your body gets an ample net gain with little energy loss.

Mined salt, or rock salt, is also a poor substitute for Himalayan Crystal Salt. While natural rock salt comes close to being intact and is more valuable than industrial table salt, from a biophysical as well as bio-chemical perspective, it holds little value.

The elements contained in rock salt lack sufficient compression to be included in the crystal web, but are only attached to the surface and in the gaps of the crystalline structure. It is the considerable pressure that brings the elements to a colloidal state – where your cells can readily absorb them. The valuable elements found in rock salt are useless because your body cannot absorb and metabolize them.

You Can Also Use Himalayan Crystal Salt as a Bath Soak

Besides using this salt on your food and to cook with, it has multiple other exciting benefits as well.

I highly recommend you regularly use the Himalayan Bath Salt, because when you take a “brine bath,” the Himalyan salt’s healthy minerals are stored in the form of ions. This stimulation rejuvenates your skin, which is beneficial for everyone. Read More about the Himalayan Bath Salt.

Learn More About the Many Benefits to You of a “Brine Bath” with Himalayan Bath Salts

Himalayan salt has multiple other uses for your skin as well, which you can tap by integrating it with other natural approaches. It really has an amazing untapped potential that has not yet been recognized.

In 2007 when I started my work with Dr Hal Huggins I quickly learned that the three worst foods you can put into your body were sugar, alchohol and caffeine, in that order.

I was always disturbed when wandering through a supermarket or healthfood store to see products promoted as healthy because it was low fat only to see massive amounts of sugar.

Refined sugar and sugar substitutes are horrendous to your body, sugar will create an imbalance between the calcium and phosphorus in your blood chemistry. This will result in one of six problems, calculus build up on your teeth, cataracts in your eyes, kidney stones, gallstones, arthritis or aterial sclerosis.

In a ground-breaking news story, 60 Minutes reports that new research coming out of some of America’s most respected institutions is finding that sugar is a toxin that can lead to major chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and cancer.

This is jolting to people who don’t realize that even if they don’t add it to their foods, hidden sugar, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is in virtually all processed foods, from yogurts and sauces to breads and sodas.

Although some experts argue that “sugar is sugar,” test subjects in strict clinical trials who were monitored 24 hours a day, who consumed HFCS, developed higher risk factors for cardiovascular disease within two weeks.

Other studies indicate that if you limit your sugar, no matter what form you get it in, you decrease your chances of developing cancer—including breast and colon cancers.

What’s even more startling is that a growing number of studies are also showing that the more sugar you eat, the less satisfied you are.

It Pays to Listen to Alternative Health Experts…

This is another perfect example of how it can take the conventional medical establishment YEARS to catch up to the truth.

I’ve been writing about the dangers of high sugar consumption for over 15 years, ever since I started this web site back in 1997, as this is (or at least should be) part of the very basics of “proper nutrition.”

So if you’re a longtime subscriber to this newsletter (or other alternative health news), you’ve had a tremendous head start.

As time went on, it first became increasingly clear that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was more problematic than regular sugar (sucrose), and later, that whichever form of sugar you consume, it can act as a literal toxin in your body when consumed in excess.

Back in the year 2000, I published the work of Bill Misner, Ph.D. in an article that was aptly named Killer Sugar—Suicide With a Spoon. Then, about two years ago, I came across one of Dr. Robert Lustig’s lectures, and I immediately knew he was right—sugar is a toxin; at least in the high amounts most American’s are getting it in.

As Dr. Lustig states in his article on the website Diet Doctori :

“The problem with sugar isn’t just weight gain … A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly.”

That same year, the brilliant work of Dr. Richard Johnson also convinced me that fructose is the worst of the two (although it’s really like choosing between two evils.) Now, finally, 60 Minutes, which is one of my favorite TV shows, has revealed the truth to the masses, and yes, some people are absolutely shocked by it. Interestingly, as I have gotten to know Dr. Johnson, I learned that I actually inspired him to pursue this topic further. Very shortly, we plan to be publishing his new book, The Fat Switch, which promises to turn the health world on its head with his exciting discoveries.

How High Fructose Corn Syrup has Decimated Human Health

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) entered the American market in 1975. Food and beverage manufacturers quickly began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup when they discovered that it could save them a lot of money. Sucrose costs about three times as much as HFCS. HFCS is also about 20 percent sweeter than table sugar, so you need less to achieve the same amount of sweetness.

Around that same time, dietary fats were blamed for heart disease, giving rise to the “low-fat craze,” which resulted in an explosion of processed nonfat and low fat convenience foods—most of which tasted like sawdust unless sugar was added. Fructose was then added to make all these fat-free products more palatable. Yet as the low-fat craze spread, rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity skyrocketed…

Clearly, this plan was seriously flawed from the get-go, and it’s not difficult to see that trading fat for sugar is not a wise move.

We now know, without a doubt, that it’s the excessive fructose content in the modern diet that is taking such a devastating toll on people’s health.

At the heart of it all is the fact that excessive fructose consumption leads to insulin resistance, and insulin resistance appears to be the root of many if not most chronic disease. Insulin resistance has even been found to be an underlying factor of cancer. Fructose also raises your uric acid levels—it typically generates uric acid within minutes of ingestion, which in turn can wreak havoc on your blood pressure, insulin production, and kidney function. So far, scientific studies have linked fructose to about 78 different diseases and health problemsii . For example, fructose may:

Raise your blood pressureiii , and cause nocturnal hypertensioniv

Insulin resistance / Type 2 diabetesv

Non-alcoholic fatty liver diseasevi (NAFLD)

Raise your uric acid levelsvii, which can result in gout and/or metabolic syndromeviii

Accelerate the progression of chronic kidney diseaseix

Intracranial atherosclerosisx(narrowing and hardening of the arteries in your skull)

Exacerbate cardiac abnormalities if you’re deficient in copper

Have a genotoxic effect on the colon

Promote metastasis in breast cancer patientsxi

Cause tubulointerstitial injuryxii (injury to the tubules and interstitial tissue of your kidney)

Promote obesityxiii and related health problems and diseases

Promote pancreatic cancer growthxiv

Here’s an excellent illustration showing how carbohydrates and sugars affect your health.

Source: Nutrients. 2011 March; 3(3): 341–369.

Contamination and Genetic Engineering Adds to the Health Hazards of HFCS

And, as if the negative metabolic effects are not enough, there are other issues with HFCS that can have a negative impact on your health:
•More than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCSxv .
•Crystalline fructose (a super-potent form of fructose the food and beverage industry is now using) may contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals.
•Nearly all corn syrup is made from genetically engineered corn, which comes with its own set of risks. For example, Bt toxin found in genetically engineered Bt corn has now been detected in the bloodstream of 93 percent of pregnant women tested, and in 80 percent of the umbilical cord of tested babies. There’s already plenty of evidence that the Bt-toxin produced in genetically engineered corn and cotton plants is toxic to humans and mammals and triggers immune system responses. The fact that it flows through our blood, and that is passes through the umbilical cord into fetuses, may help explain the rise in many disorders in the US since Bt crop varieties were first introduced in 1996.

Using Uric Acid Levels as a Marker for Fructose Toxicity

The link between fructose and uric acid is so strong that you can actually use your uric acid levels as a marker for fructose toxicity. According to the latest research in this area, the safest range of uric acid appears to be between 3 and 5.5 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl), and there appears to be a steady relationship between uric acid levels and blood pressure and cardiovascular risk, even down to the range of 3 to 4 mg/dl.

Dr. Richard Johnson suggests that the ideal uric acid level is probably around 4 mg/dl for men and 3.5 mg/dl for women. I would strongly encourage everyone to have their uric acid level checked to find out how sensitive you are to fructose.

As you know, two-thirds of the US population is overweight, and most of these people likely have uric acid levels well above 5.5. Some may even be closer to 10 or above. Measuring your uric acid levels is a very practical way to determine just how strict you need to be when it comes to your fructose consumption. As an example, if you’re passionate about fruit and typically eat large amounts of it, but find out you have a uric acid level above 5 (or better yet, 4 if you’re a man, and 3.5 if you’re a woman), then you may want to consider lowering your fruit consumption until you’ve optimized your uric acid levels, to avoid harming your body.

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

I believe many of the western world chronic health problems would simply disappear if greater attention was paid to the root problem — the food you eat.

Americans’ reliance on processed foods is a major factor that drives the rampant disease increases in the US, such as diabetes. According to a new report from the American Diabetes Association,1 an estimated 22.3 million people were living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million in 2007.

But why do Americans buy so much processed food and junky snacks? Well, first of all, junk foods are heavily promoted by the US government via agricultural subsidies for crops like corn and soy.

Add to that misleading yet highly effective marketing, and — the focus of this article — the addictive nature of junk food, which is a science in and of itself.

In order to protect your health, I advise spending 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods. Most Americans currently do the opposite, and this will undoubtedly have an effect on your health, especially in the long term.

The Food Industry’s Role in America’s Health Crisis

In the featured New York Times article,2 investigative reporter Michael Moss writes about the extraordinary science behind taste and junk food addiction, and how multinational food companies struggle to maintain their “stomach shares” in the face of mounting evidence that their foods are driving the health crisis.

In it, he mentions a 1999 meeting between 11 CEO’s in charge of America’s largest food companies, including Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Mars. He writes:

“James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury… was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. ‘We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue… [T]here was a lot of pressure on food companies.’

…[Behnke] was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations — from the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.”

The Parallels Between Cigarettes and Junk Food

On that day in 1999, Michael Mudd, vice president of Kraft, did “the unthinkable” during his speech — he drew a connection between processed foods and cigarettes. We no longer condone cigarette ads for teens, having clearly established the health hazards associated with smoking, despite decades-long denials from the industry.

Yet we now blindly accept the same kind of misleading tactics being applied to junk food, even though the health ramifications rival, if not surpass, those of smoking. Mudd presented a plan to address the obesity problem, which would help defuse the criticism building against the food industry.

In my view, the criticism was, and still is, justifiable. As just one example, General Mills created Yoplait that same year (1999), which “transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert,” to use Moss’ own words. In fact, Yoplait yoghurt contained 100 percent more sugar per serving than the company’s Lucky Charms cereal! Yet everyone recognized yoghurt as a wholesome food, and sales of Yoplait soared.

Mudd proposed employing scientists “to gain a deeper understanding of what was driving Americans to overeat.” Once they knew that, products could then be reformulated; salt, sugar and fat use could be reined in, and advertising could be repositioned. The 1999 meeting didn’t go well. It effectively ended when Stephen Sanger, head of General Mills, allegedly stated he would not jeopardize the sanctity of the recipes that had made his products so successful in order to appease the critics.

Fast-forward a decade and we now have novel biotech flavor companies like Senomyx, which specializes in helping companies do what Mudd proposed — finding new flavors to reduce sugar and salt content in processed foods.

These “flavor enhancers” are created using secret, patented processes, and they do not need to be listed on the food label. The lack of labeling requirements is particularly troublesome and will most likely become an issue in the future. As of now, they simply fall under the generic category of artificial and/or natural flavors. What this means is that the product will appear to be much “healthier” than it might otherwise be, were a flavor enhancer not used. The question is, are chemical flavor enhancers safe? Or are food companies simply exchanging one harmful substance for another? That remains to be seen.

This is a Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.

The Flavorists. Morley Safer reports on the multibillion dollar flavor industry, whose scientists create natural and artificial flavorings that make your mouth water and keep you coming back for more. For transcript, see CBSNews.com

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Canadian and American obesity statistics are now neck-to-neck, with about one-quarter to one third of adults in the obese category. A staggering two-thirds of Americans are overweight. This in turn drives skyrocketing diabetes rates.

According to the latest report from the American Diabetes Association,3 an estimated 22.3 million people were living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in 2012, up from 17.5 million in 2007. Last year 246,000 deaths were attributed to diabetes. The UK also recently released updated statistics, showing a record three million Britons are now diagnosed with diabetes,4 which equates to 4.6 percent of the British population. Another 850,000 Britons are believed to have undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes.

The total cost of diagnosed diabetes in the US last year was $245 billion, a whopping 41 percent increase from the $174 billion spent in 2007.5 Obesity also drives rising rates of heart disease, kidney failure, gout, and blindness, just to name a few associated health problems, all of which contribute to soaring health care costs.

So who or what is to blame? As it turns out, poor will power is NOT the heart of the matter.

According to Moss’ four-year long investigation, interviewing more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, there’s a conscious effort on behalf of food manufacturers to get you hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive to make. I recommend reading the featured article in its entirety, as it offers a series of case studies that shed light on the extraordinary science and marketing tactics that make junk food so hard to resist.

Finding Your Bliss Point

Moss’ work also resulted in the book Salt Sugar Fat, in which he dissects the $1 trillion processed food industry. Sugar, salt and fat are the top three substances making processed foods so addictive. In a Time Magazine interview6 discussing his book, Moss says:

“One of the things that really surprised me was how concerted and targeted the effort is by food companies to hit the magical formulation. Take sugar for example. The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the ‘bliss point.’ Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon, and send products flying off the shelves. It is the process they’ve engineered that struck me as really stunning.

When it came to fat, it was the amazing role of what the industry calls the ‘mouth feel.’ That’s the warm, gooey taste of cheese, or the bite into a crisp fried chicken that you get. It rushes right to the same pleasure centers of the brain that sugar does…

When it comes to salt, what was really staggering to me is that the industry itself is totally hooked on salt. It is this miracle ingredient that solves all of their problems. There is the flavor burst to the salt itself, but it also serves as a preservative so foods can stay on the shelves for months. It also masks a lot of the off-notes in flavors that are inherent to processed foods.”

One of the guiding principles for the processed food industry is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” Moss describes this as “the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm your brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.” The greatest successes, whether beverages or foods, owe their “craveability” to complex formulas that pique your taste buds just enough, without overwhelming them, thereby overriding your brain’s inclination to say “enough.”

“Vanishing calorie density” is another term used to describe foods that melt in your mouth, which has the effect of making your brain think it doesn’t contain any calories. End result — you keep eating. Cheetos is one such example. In all, potato chips are among the most addictive junk foods on the market, containing all three bliss-inducing ingredients: sugar (from the potato), salt and fat. One 2011 study cited by Moss determined that the top contributors to Americans weight gain included red meat, processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, potatoes, and topping the list: potato chips.

“The coating of salt, the fat content that rewards the brain with instant feelings of pleasure, the sugar that exists not as an additive but in the starch of the potato itself — all of this combines to make it the perfect addictive food,” Moss writes.

Sugar — One of the Most Addictive Substances Known

While food companies abhor the word “addiction” in reference to their products, scientists have discovered that sugar, in particular, is just that. In fact, sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Research7 published in 2007 showed that 94 percent of rats who were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, chose sugar. Even rats who were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.

The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on the tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times’ high-sugar consumption. Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms, and thus lead to addiction.

Even more interesting, their research found that there’s also a cross-tolerance and a cross-dependence between sugars and addictive drugs. As an example, animals with a long history of sugar consumption actually became tolerant (desensitized) to the analgesic effects of morphine. Today, prescription pain killers have surpassed illegal drugs as the preferred “high,” and pharmaceutical drug overdoses now rank second only to motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in the US. Unfortunately, since it’s all legal, no one is really cracking down on this growing drug problem that is wrecking lives each day.

According to Moss:8

“[T]he food industry defends itself by saying true narcotic addiction has certain technical thresholds that you just don’t find in food addiction. It’s true, but in some ways getting unhooked on foods is harder than getting unhooked on narcotics, because you can’t go cold turkey. You can’t just stop eating.”

It’s important to realize that added sugar (typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup) is not confined to junky snack foods. For example, most of Prego’s spaghetti sauces have one common feature, and that is sugar — it’s the second largest ingredient, right after tomatoes. A half-cup of Prego Traditional contains the equivalent of more than two teaspoons of sugar.

Two Moms Take on Kraft

In related news, two moms have taken on Kraft. They started an online petition, calling for the food giant to remove two artificial food ingredients, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6, from its Macaroni and Cheese. These artificial dyes have been linked to hyperactivity in children, and are banned for use in the UK. More than 220,000 signatures have been collected so far. Kraft’s response?

“… in the US, we only use colors that are approved and deemed safe for food use by the Food and Drug Administration.”

If you, like so many others, aren’t impressed by this response, feel free to sign the petition, available on Change.org.

This is a Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.

Troubled Meats Get a Makeover

Another food many don’t automatically view as health-harming is processed meats. Moss includes the case story of Bob Drane, vice president of Oscar Meyer, who in 1985 was tasked with figuring out how to contemporize their processed meat offerings. Interviews with harried mothers revealed that the most important issue for them was time, which resulted in the development of a convenient prepackaged lunch containing the company’s pre-sliced bologna and ham, better known as Lunchables. A later line of the lunch trays, called Maxed Out, contained, two-thirds of the maximum recommended sodium allowance for kids, and a staggering 13 teaspoons of sugar.

The Atlantic9 recently reported that “consuming processed meat went along with other unhealthful lifestyle choices, such as eating few fruits and vegetables, being more likely to smoke and, for men, consuming large quantities of alcohol.”

The new study, which reconfirms results from previous studies, found processed meat consumption was strongly associated with premature death.10 According to the researchers, reducing daily processed meat consumption to less than 20 grams a day could reduce mortality rates across Europe by three percent annually. This includes bacon, sausage of all kinds, sandwich meats (cold cuts), and any other processed “meat product.”

In 2011, the World Cancer Research Fund came to the sobering conclusion that no one should eat processed meats, ever, due to its cancer-causing potential. Hot dogs, bacon, salami and other processed meats may also increase your risk of diabetes by 50 percent, and lower your lung function and increase your risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A 2007 analysis by WCRF found that eating just one sausage a day can significantly raise your risk of bowel cancer. Specifically, 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily — about one sausage or three pieces of bacon — raises the likelihood of the cancer by 20 percent. Other studies have also found that processed meats increase your risk of:
•Colon cancer by 50 percent
•Bladder cancer by 59 percent
•Stomach cancer by 38 percent
•Pancreatic cancer by 67 percent

What Do Processed Food Company Executives Eat?

Another interesting tidbit offered up by Moss is the eating habits of the food scientists and processed food company executives themselves, whom he met while researching his book. Just like many of our American Presidents, they apparently know more about maintaining their own health than they want you to know about.

Last year, I wrote about political supporters of genetically engineered (GE) foods insisting on all organic fare for themselves and their families while promoting unlabeled GE foods for everyone else. This includes President Obama, who vowed to label GMO’s if elected, but then spent the first four years appointing one Monsanto shill after another into key federal positions that wield near-absolute power over agricultural issues, and never took affirmative action on the labeling issue, even during the height of the California Prop 37 campaign. In the same vein, Moss discovered that many of the food executives and scientists he met avoid their own foods for a variety of health reasons:

“It was everything from a former top scientist at Kraft saying he used to maintain his weight by jogging, and then he blew out his knee and couldn’t exercise, his solution was to avoid sugar and all caloric drinks, including all the Kool-Aid and sugary drinks that Kraft makes,” Moss says.

“It ranged from him to the former top scientist at Frito Lay. I spent days at his house going over documents relating to his efforts at Frito Lay to push the company to cut back on salt. He served me plain, cooked oatmeal and raw asparagus for lunch. We toured his kitchen, and he did not have one single processed food product in his cupboards or refrigerator.

…One reason they don’t eat their own products, is that they know better. They know about the addictive properties of sugar, salt and fat. As insiders, they know too much. I think a lot of them have come to feel badly…”

As Moss says, it’s not that these companies have the demise of your health as a defined business goal. But they do want you to buy their product, and the more the better. Taste is a major, if not overriding factor here, and processed food without generous amounts of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats (like trans fat) would simply be too unpalatable to most. So while some companies, such as Kraft, have tried to alter their formulas to make them “healthier,” the fact remains that processed food is inferior to the real thing no matter how you finagle it. You simply cannot compete with the nutrition found in whole, unprocessed foods.

“Ultimately, they ran into the problem that the whole industry faces, which is the huge pressure from Wall Street and the investment community to increase profits,” Moss says.

How to Eat Real Food on a Budget

This concerted effort by the industry is further enhanced by stimulating your metabolism to burn carbs as its primary fuel. As long as you are in primary carb-burning mode you will strongly crave these types of foods. But once you start decreasing your carbs and protein and replace them with high quality fats, and start to engage in intermittent fasting, your cravings for these junk foods, no matter how cleverly enhanced, will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether.

In order to protect your health, I believe you should spend 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent on processed foods (unfortunately most Americans currently do the opposite). This requires three strategies, especially if you’re working with a tight budget:
•Become resourceful: This is an area where your grandmother can be a wealth of information, as how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a good meal was common knowledge to generations past. What I mean is getting back to the basics of cooking — using the bones from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup, extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners, learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts of meat, using up leftovers and so on.
•Plan your meals: This is essential, as you will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be successful for if you fail to plan, by default you are planning to fail. Ideally this will involve scouting out your local farmer’s markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly, but you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales. You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you’re short on time in the evenings.
•Avoid food waste: According to a study published in the journal PloS One,11 Americans waste an estimated 1,400 calories of food per person, each and every day. The two steps above will help you to mitigate food waste in your home, You may also have seen my article from earlier this year titled 14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries. Among those tips are suggestions for keeping your groceries fresher, longer, and I suggest reviewing those tips now.

When choosing real foods to feed your family, remember that some of the healthiest foods are incredibly affordable, even under $1 a serving, such as:
•Raw organic milk
•Raw nuts and seeds
•Two cage-free organic eggs
•Avocado, berries and broccoli
•Fermented foods you make at home

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Children’s health and full potential are being limited before their lives have begun, starting in the womb and continuing through birth and the early years.

A number of abuses to their developing bodies and minds come from their mothers’ diets, standard childbirth practices, and poor nutrition. To give your children the best chance for full and healthy lives, you need to know the difference between what’s harmful and what’s healthy.

Trouble can start before your child is conceived. To give birth to a healthy baby, your own health is critical, but concerns don’t end there.

You need to know how to protect your baby and yourself from harmful medical practices during birth and to provide them with nutrition that develops sound bodies and minds.

Serious Health Problems Can Start with Mother’s Excess Weight

Babies of obese mothers are born with thickened aorta walls, a common sign of impending cardiovascular disease, according to a new study. The research team expressed concern that the earliest signs of heart disease are seen in a thickened abdominal aorta, so these babies may be at far higher risk of heart disease and stroke.1

The newborn’s weight does not appear to make a difference. Researchers found that when mothers are obese, babies are born with thickened aortal walls and a likely predisposition to cardiovascular disease.

If you’re a woman with weight problems, it would be helpful to take steps to address this major risk factor it before becoming pregnant. You can, though, take heart in knowing that every pound of unhealthy weight you lose will benefit your baby, because the study found that less weight means thinner arteries, even if you aren’t able to reach your ideal weight.

If you’ve tried to follow typical diet plans that focus on restricting calories, be sure to investigate my Nutrition Plan which will help you get away from the yoyo of quick weight loss followed by rebounding and gaining even more than before the diet.

The Type of Fat Consumer Seriously Affects Baby’s Health

A new University of Kansas study reports multiple benefits for infants of mothers given the omega-3 fatty acid, DHA, during pregnancy. Their babies not only weighed more at birth, their weight was less likely to be low, and they had a better chance of being born full term.2

DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is one of the omega-3 fatty acids that your body cannot synthesize and is required for health. While it’s usually best to get nutrients from your food, omega-3 fatty acids are an exception. The best food sources are fish, but unfortunately, they’re often polluted with mercury, PCBs, and other toxins. Therefore, this is one exception to the rule. You’re better off taking an animal-derived omega-3 supplement than eating most of the foods that provide it.

Some Beverages Should Be Avoided During Pregnancy

You are what you eat — and your baby’s nutrition comes from your diet. That’s why two beverages should probably be limited or stricken from the pregnant woman’s diet altogether: coffee and alcohol. New studies have documented that both have bad effects on a baby’s health.
•Caffeine consumption during pregnancy can result in two seemingly contradictory results. Babies may suffer from low birth weight and pregnancies may be too long.3 There is also a well known correlation with caffeine consumption, especially during early pregnancy, and increased risk of birth defects and miscarriage.4
•Alcohol abuse during pregnancy has been implicated in 1 of 6 cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and 3% of other infant deaths.5

Of course, the drink you associate most with caffeine is probably coffee, which does have a beneficial side, if it is high quality and made safely. Pregnancy, though, is a game changer. Although the study’s authors are cautious in pointing out that a cause and effect connection hasn’t been shown between coffee and low birth weight or extended pregnancy, do you really want to take a chance with your baby’s well-being?

You are probably aware already that fructose can be harmful to your health. At a minimum, it exacerbates many conditions, and is the cause of many others. Particularly significant during pregnancy, though, is that fructose’s even more evil offspring, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) causes obesity.6 Fructose is similar to alcohol, so it’s not surprising that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause so much harm to babies in the womb.

The Best Start in Life Is Natural Birth

Trillions of microorganisms in the human gastrointestinal tract form an intricate, living fabric of natural controls affecting body weight, energy, and nutrition, according to a recent study.7 Anything that upsets the natural balance of gut bacteria could negatively impact your newborn’s health.

Babies born by caesarian sections are missing an entire group of bacteria normally found in the gastrointestinal tract, according to a New York Times report of a new study.8 It found that the microbiota of infants born by caesarian delivery is particularly low in bacterial numbers and diversity.9 Children born by caesarians are five times more likely to suffer with allergies than those born naturally.

Scientists believe the loss of bacterial diversity provided by passage through the birth canal is the reason. Prevent Disease reports that lead researcher, Dr. Christine Cole Johnson, says, “We believe a baby’s exposure to bacteria in the birth canal is a major influencer on their immune system.” C-section-delivered children are far more likely to develop allergic reactions to common household substances, such as dust mite droppings and pet dander. Prevent Disease reports other health problems more common to children born by caesarian deliveries:10
•A Danish study of 34,000 deliveries found that C-section births may be causing babies to suffer four times more respiratory problems.
•Obesity rates may be doubled.
•Food allergies are more common.

Mothers who undergo caesarian deliveries also suffer health problems. They are more likely to have placenta problems during a second pregnancy. The risk of a uterine rupture during a later vaginal delivery is 50 times more likely! One study from Latin America reports that non-emergency caesarians double the mother’s risk of illness and death.

In fact, there is a growing body of clinical evidence that caesarian deliveries increase the risk of over 30 adverse health outcomes, which is all the more tragic considering how many are now being performed electively as a “convenience” or “precaution.”11 Suffice it to say, you should avoid caesarian deliveries unless it’s medically necessary for both your baby’s health and your own.

Natural Birth Is More Than Avoiding Caesarian: Cord Clamping

The standard routine in most hospitals, and even by most midwives, is to clamp the umbilical cord as soon as possible.12 It may be the single most harmful medical procedure because it is done to nearly everyone. At birth, about one-third of a newborn infant’s blood is in the cord. It is your child’s birthright. Here’s what happens because of impatience to clamp the cord:
•Iron deficiency anemia is a serious problem in newborns. By waiting until the cord blood has literally pulsed into your infant’s body, this risk is almost eliminated.
•Oxygen deprivation is one of the greatest causes of neonatal death. Early cord clamping loses a third of a baby’s oxygen.
•Red blood cells carry that life-giving oxygen, so babies start life without a third of their blood.
•White blood cells and antibodies are one of the most important factors in fighting infections. A full third of newborns’ ability to fight pathogens is stolen from them.
•Stem cells in cord blood are everyone’s birthright. By clamping the cord early, the equivalent of an autologous stem cell transplant is lost.

If you insisting on waiting to cut the umbilical cord until it stops pulsing, rarely more than 90 seconds, you will be providing your newborn an edge that may save her life.

Your baby loses up to a third of the blood that rightfully belongs to him because of routine cord clamping. Dr. Alan Green gave an entertaining and impassioned TED Talk, “90 Seconds to Change the World,” explaining how it came to be routine and what is lost to nearly every person born today:

Breast Milk: Perfect Nutrition from Birth

While in the womb, your baby’s nutritional needs are met by you. Most women can continue to provide the perfect food. Breastfeeding is not only the least expensive way to feed and protect your new child’s health, it also helps you transition into being a mother. Your brain is activated to respond to your own infant’s cry and helps to build the empathy needed to develop a strong mother-child bond.13

The same study that demonstrated the importance of natural childbirth for healthy gut microbiota also showed that babies fed breast milk have a better balance of bacteria than formula-fed babies. As a result, their digestion and immune systems are better, and inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, cancer, or allergies are less likely to afflict them. Breast milk provides several critical factors that affect your baby’s wellbeing for the rest of his life:
•Antibodies are transferred to the baby, providing immunity to the same diseases that the mother is protected from.
•Neurotrophic factors — from ancient Greek meaning nerve nourishing factors — help your baby’s brain grow to her best potential.
•Cytokines in breast milk are involved in cellular communication and immune response.
•Protein extracts from breast milk increase survival of intestinal neurons and growth of neurites, which are extensions of neurons.

The brain and gut grow from the same tissue during early fetal development. They’re connected by the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the abdomen, allowing them to coordinate and communicate. The gut is truly a second brain. So providing your child’s digestive tract with well balanced gut flora also improves brain function, and after birth nothing does that better than breast feeding.

Breastfeeding Saves Babies’ Lives

A report from Save the Children calls breast milk “Superfood for Babies.” It estimates that 830,000 newborns’ lives could be saved each year if they were breastfed during the first hour of life.14 That simple change is all it would take because the mother’s milk during the first couple of days after birth is colostrum, which contains more concentrated nutrients and antibodies, specially made to nourish and protect newborns whose digestive systems are quite small.

Colostrum has a mild laxative effect, helping the newborn expel the first stool, called meconium. This stool contains excess bilirubin, which results from the large number of red blood cells produced to help prevent jaundice.16 It also contains high quantities of white blood cells called leukocytes to help protect the new child from disease. The first hour of birth is referred to as the power hour. Not only does beast feeding your baby early provide a jumpstart to a life of good health, it also helps assure that you’ll continue breastfeeding for at least six months.15

However there are many factors that impair a woman’s ability to breastfed. So rather than feeling guilty and stopping breast feeding, if you or someone you know finds yourself in that group that it would be wise to consult with a lactation consultant or contact LaLeche League to guide you through the process of seeking to address the reasons that are preventing you from breastfeeding.

Do You Know What Your Children Are Eating?

National Public Radio (NPR) conducted a poll to see if children are actually eating what their parents believe. The disappointing results showed that the reality was not as parents thought. NPR reported that 87% of parents believed their children were eating much healthier food than proved to be the reality.17

One parent, Deborah Richards of Oakland, California, said that her son, Donta, ate well. NPR reported that she believes he eats a healthier diet than she does. That proved not to be true. Donta said that his regular breakfast consists of a pack of Skittles candies. Obviously, in today’s busy world it is very difficult to know just what your children are eating. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that good eating habits are instilled very early in life.

Your Child’s Lifelong Welfare Depends on You

People did not always need to think about health. Hunter-gatherer diets were naturally healthy. Exercise was a given, because survival required being physically active. Now, though, things have changed. Food does not generally arrive through foraging or hunting. Employment keeps most of us inside and inactive most of the time. Natural methods of giving birth have given way to ritualized medical techniques that run counter to both the child’s and mother’s wellbeing. Children don’t spend most of their time with parents, learning how to survive by watching and receiving instruction as needed.

Today, far too many people have little awareness of their basic health requirements, and the result is showing up in the misery of chronic disease. Young children are suffering diseases that their grandparents saw only in their own grandparents. It has become critical to educate yourself so that you can save your children from lives circumscribed by ill health.

Whether already born or still a twinkle in their father’s eye, if you want your children to lead full and healthy lives, you need to optimize your own health and your knowledge of foods and methods that support health.

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