Interview With John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part II of II)

The following is the second and final installment of an interview with John McCabe concerning his book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health. Here he ventures beyond his own story and the story of writing this book, and goes on to explain the intentions behind Sunfood Living, and the need in today’s society for the movement that it promotes.

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You call Sunfood Living a “Resource Guide” and have been praised for its clarity and comprehensibility as an “Encyclopedia for Healthy Living.” Is it your intention for the book to be referred to as a reference book or to be read continuously from cover to cover? How do you imagine readers to use Sunfood Living most effectively?

I’ve heard from several people who say they have read it cover-to-cover. I’ll take it as a compliment that anyone did do it.

You never know how certain books will connect with people. Of course, you can’t control what people think of your book. It takes on a life of its own. I’ve heard people describe the book as a “Bible.” I think that might be a compliment.

I didn’t consider that the book was going to be read by people in places like Brazil, China, Australia, and India. But, that is what is going on. I’ve heard from people in those countries, and others. Authors today may want to consider that they are writing for a global market.

I think of the book as a reference book. I suspect that people would most likely read the first half of the book, and then use the resource guide in the second half to look up topics that interest them.

Sunfood Living at once explores both the environment and personal health. Did your interest in writing this book originally stem from one of these two subjects? Or did you anticipate the intimate connection between an individual’s food choices and the health of the environment from the beginning?

I had always been concerned about the environment. Even as a child I liked to plant trees, and I kept a vegetable garden going since I was first able to start using a shovel. As a boy I would go into the nearby woods to clean them of trash. I recently found out that the woods and meadows I hung out in as a child have all been cut down, and most of the area is a large parking lot. Specific trees have been planted, and they are wide enough apart so that a tractor lawn mower can get between them. The dirt pathways have been paved so that people won’t get their shoes soiled. It’s all so pathetic.

By the time I was ten years old I had pretty much concluded that I didn’t want to eat animals. I had no idea that other people avoided meat. I only started to tilt toward a plant-based diet after I saw a deer hanging from my neighbor’s back yard tree, where they had tied it up by its hind legs and slit open its neck to drain its blood. I was alone when I saw this, and it changed my life.

As far as the animal farming industry and the impact it has on the environment, when I was young I had no idea how much of harm animal farming was and is doing to the planet. Now there are many studies concluding that animal farming and all of its related industries cause more global pollution than all trucks, cars, and airplanes combined. The most common use of farmland throughout the world is to grow food for billions of farmed animals, not for people. The most common use of synthetic fertilizers is to grow the food for farmed animals. The fertilizers are the number one cause of dead zones that are now in every ocean. The fertilizers are also major players in the excessive microscopic algae growth that is killing sea coral around the planet. Sea coral support 25% of all life forms in the oceans, and all sea coral have either died, or are growing at stunted rates. The algae is also blocking light in the lakes, rivers, and oceans, which allows bacteria to grow out of control, which is killing all sorts of marine life. The bacteria feed on the sugars from the algae, and the bacteria also feed on the little creatures called polyps that make up the sea coral. Those are some levels of the damage being done by the animal farming industry, and by farms that are using synthetic farming chemicals. I am glad that I am not participating in the animal farming industry.

When we consider what people are eating these days, and what they treating as food, it is easy to make the connection between the health problems they are experiencing (obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc.) and the foods they are eating. This is especially true when you look at people who follow a plant-based diet, and compare them to those who consume whatever commercial culture is advertising as food. If it is advertised on television and radio as food, you can pretty much consider it to be junk food. Real food doesn’t need to be advertised. It is raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and seaweeds that we should be eating. And not fast food and packaged stuff advertised as convenient, and especially not anything that contains synthetic dyes, flavorings, scents, preservatives, or other chemicals. Junk food makes your life inconvenient because consuming it leads to health problems.

As far as how the book happened, I can’t really pinpoint any one thing. I had written a book about the corruption in the medical industry. It was titled Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates. That book got me to thinking of ways that people can maintain and improve their health so that they wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to rely on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and surgery to make them healthful.
I began writing a book in 1994 that was all about the vegetarian diet. Over the years I would work on it a bit, then put it away. Eventually that book is what became Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health.

It wasn’t one thing that got me to write the book. It was many things. Life is a complex combination of intricate details that all play off of and impact one another. Sunfood Living connects the dots. Our health equals the health of wildlife and Earth. We are all connected. What you do each day impacts wildlife thousands of miles away. People should recognize that and adjust their lives accordingly to be a part of the solution rather than carry on being part of the disease we are calling global warming.

As the Foreword describes, this book is infused with ethical consciousness. In what ways do the ethics of global health become linked to politics? Do you see this relationship as productive or problematic?

We are all politicians. We are all campaigning for how we believe the world should be. We do this by our daily choices. We should start being what we want to see.

If we don’t change our ways very soon, we won’t have to worry about any of this. The ice caps will melt – they are melting. The ocean currents will change – they are changing. The ocean life will collapse – it is collapsing. When there are no sea creatures to support the circle of life of the land creatures, the land creatures will die. The nuclear power plants on the edges of rivers and oceans will flood. The world will be poisoned beyond anything covered in Al Gore’s documentary, The Inconvenient Truth. Massive extinction will take place – a massive extinction is taking place.

Is that a problem?

People need to become involved in their lives, in becoming part of the solution. The number one way humans interact with Earth is by what we eat. Change what you consume to be more environmentally sustainable.

In Sunfood Living, you present a system with which to approach the world: challenge, action, resolution. Why is this course of action important and what does it achieve?

I try to provide information that will educate people, both through my writing, through quotes I include, and through Web sources and suggested reading material.

The best way for getting people to act is to get them to understand. If they don’t understand something, they are not likely to act on it.

We are Earth and we are each other. We absorb things that are around us. There are substances constantly passing through our skin and bodies that then travel into other things. There is no separation of us and Earth. Thinking that we are separate from each other is fallacy. We are breathing in gasses, drinking water, and eating food. We are taking in wavelengths of light from Sun that are used by our bodies as nutrients. We are producing molecules that leave our bodies and saturate the people and things around us. If you look at us under a supercharged microscope, you can see that nothing in us is actually touching. There is space between the smallest substances. The energy fields of the planet are playing into the energy fields inside of us. What we choose to do impacts other things on subtle levels.

We are alive at an amazing time. We have the opportunity to transform ourselves and to transform the Earth into a much more healthful state.

You are achieving something with every choice you make. But, is it what you wish to be achieving? Are your achievements part of the solution?

You just touched on the fact that we are alive at “an amazing time.” Can you please expand on the particular reason for this book to be written now, for the world today? Are there any changes on a global level that you hope to see resulting from the distribution of Sunfood Living and other books on related topics?

If now isn’t the time to transform human culture to be more Earth friendly, than I don’t know what time it is.

I hope Sunfood Living turns people to a whole new level of health, a different way of dealing with their every day decisions, and gets people to set new standards of how we treat Earth and the web of life on Her.

And I hope Sunfood Living plays a part in getting us to restore and protect wildlife habitat so that we no longer have to worry about another creature or plant going extinct.

CLICK HERE to read Part I of the interview with John McCabe.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s new Sunfood Traveler web site, a simple and free guide to raw food and sustainability.

David Wolfe Featured on Coast to Coast Radio

David Wolfe is the bestselling author of The Sunfood Diet Success System, Naked Chocolate, Eating for Beauty, Amazing Grace and the upcoming Superfoods. On August 7, 2008 Wolfe was a featured guest on Coast to Coast Radio. In this interview, Wolfe offered his insights into the rapidly expanding world of raw foods and expounded upon his motto, “You are what you eat.” He explained that education is critical if people are to reach their peak physical performance. Wolfe encouraged everyone to adopt a raw foods diet, full of high power nutrition. This is important for those who are healthy, as well as those who are sick.

CLICK HERE to download the MP3 and listen to David Wolfe on Coast to Coast Radio.
CLICK HERE to learn more about David Wolfe’s books.

Interview with John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part I of II)

John McCabe is one of the leading lecturers and authorities on raw food nutrition in the world today. His new book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health, offers solutions and improvements for the consumerist lifestyle that is plaguing society today. He addresses the intimately related subjects of health and the environment, raising awareness while promoting active change toward the lifestyle necessary for the future of our planet. The following is the first installment of an interview with McCabe in which he describes his own involvement in the Sunfood movement as well as his process in writing this new book.

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Your book explains that Sunfoodists “do not eat animal protein of any sort, including from dairy, eggs, meat, or derivatives of these. They eat only uncooked (not heated, fried, boiled, grilled, toasted, blanched, broiled, barbecued, or micro waved) food consisting of the wide variety of edible plants.” How did you come to adopt these dietary choices and lifestyle? What health improvements has this change accomplished for you personally?

Probably the most common definition is of raw food vegans. Some choose to consume bee products (honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis), which does not classify them as vegans.

The term “Sunfoodist” has been around for at least several decades. When Dugald Semple wrote his 1956 book, The Sunfood Way To Health, he pretty much defined Sunfoodists as people who follow an uncooked vegan diet.

David Wolfe’s book, The Sunfood Diet Success System, which I helped to edit, includes raw honey and other unheated bee products in the classification of superfoods. Frederic Patenaude’s recipe book, Sunfood Cuisine, which I helped him to write, includes honey as an optional sweetener for some of the recipes.

Sunfoodists are a variety of people living in various cultures. Not all are so strict as to only consume a totally unheated diet. Many, may drink herbal tea. Some may steam certain foods, such as sweet potatoes. Others may eat soup, which is pretty safe. My book explains that lightly boiling foods does not create the harsh chemicals, acrylamides and glycotoxins, that are created when you bake, fry, sauté, toast, broil, barbeque, micro waved, or otherwise cook foods at high temperatures.

But, mostly, the Sunfood diet consists of unheated, fresh food, and preferably those that have been organically grown, or otherwise whatever is the highest quality available to you. I always advise people to become involved in growing some of their foods. What else could be more healthful than food picked from your own garden?

As far as how I got into eating a raw food diet, that is a long story. But, basically, when I was growing up I always kept a vegetable garden. I grew up poor, and a lot of times the only real food I could get was what was growing outside. It was also what I liked to eat more than anything. There were a lot of wild fruit trees, berry bushes, and even wild tomatoes and melons growing in the nearby woods and meadows. I noticed that I felt great during the summer. In the winter, when I didn’t have access to fresh food, I would always get sick for weeks at a time, and my skin became a mess with eczema and acne. I had mostly been a vegetarian since I was ten, but still ate junk and sometimes meat. As I recognized how good I felt in the summer while eating fresh foods, and how cruddy I felt in the winter eating whatever, my desire grew for fresh fruits and vegetables, so that is what I started doing more and more. I haven’t had a cold in years, and I don’t have the skin issues I did when I was younger. Eliminating all dairy and junk food- especially fried food, and consuming a lot more greens, including green juices, seems to have been the most beneficial dietary move. Daily exercise, becoming educated, and staying physically and intellectually active work in conjunction with diet to maintain health.

When I was young I had no idea that other people were doing this raw food thing, or that there was a classification for it. When I got out of high school I worked in loud and dirty factories and nobody there seemed happy or healthy. I had already known that I wanted something very different for my life. When I was 16 I had hitchhiked across country and also went on long road trips with friends. I found that I liked the ocean. Eventually, after quitting factory work, I moved to California. On my hitchhiking adventure, I had seen fruit growing in California in the middle of winter, which didn’t happen where I grew up. By the time I was 20 I was working as a background extra in a bunch of movies and TV shows, and was also working as a private chef for wealthy people in their mansions – and I worked as a limousine driver. I had lots of exposure to a lot of people who I grew up seeing in movies and hearing sing on the radio. Peggy Lee and Doris Duke, who were best friends, and almost like a mom and aunt to me, taught me how to make smoothies and juices from fresh fruits and vegetables. I found that a lot of the old timers were very much into fresh fruits and vegetables. For instance, Jimmy Stewart kept a vegetable garden next to his house, and he shared them with his neighbor, Lucile Ball.

For a while I moved all over the country and got into all sorts of situations. Wherever I lived and no matter what I was doing, I sought out the most healthful food.

David Wolfe was the first person I met who told me about Sunfoodists. I met him randomly at some natural products convention in the 1990s. He walked past me and I stopped him to find out where he got his hemp backpack. We ended up talking in the middle of crowds of people streaming through the convention. By the time I had met him I had already written two books about the medical industry. He asked me to look at the early manuscript of his book, The Sunfood Diet Success System. I went through it with a red pen and made a ton of notes, then sent it back to him with a lot of information about topics I thought he may want to research. That is how we became involved with our writing projects. I ended up working as a research and content editor on the first six editions of that book. He also used me for his other book, Eating for Beauty. Some other authors have also used me, but the agreement was as a “ghost,” so I’m not allowed to mention the other authors.

When I first started realizing that people were following fresh food diets, there was a big empty void of information about the benefits. Now there are all of these books, Web sites, seminars, and raw food restaurants. It is cool that I helped fuel this thing. Raw food has become this huge movement. Hollywood people and some sports stars have become interested in raw food. Wall Street is beginning to notice. Just recently a major food company purchased the raw food nutrition bar company, Larabar.

I know many people who have dramatically transformed their health by following a Sunfood diet. One is Angela Stokes of RawReform.com. Another is a man in my neighborhood. At one time he looked like a thug-for-hire. Now he looks like a prince. Sergei Boutenko is another who experienced dramatic benefits after switching to a raw food diet. He was diagnosed with diabetes and told that he would need to be on insulin for the rest of his life. Since cleaning up his diet, Sergei no longer takes insulin. With his sister, Valya, he is the co-author of the new recipe book, Fresh.

Outside of your dietary choices, how do you incorporate the theories and values described in Sunfood Living into your life in daily practice?

Just like everyone else, I am here making daily choices, trying to make my way, and hopefully making the better choices.

Diet is just one small part of the book, and it is one small part of who we are.

How we act displays our thoughts and standards.

I believe we can all make better choices, and improve our standards. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to rely on multi-national corporations to supply our every need. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to not be involved in some aspect of growing food. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to purchase soaps and household products that contain chemicals that damage the environment. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to support the animal farming, fast food, and junk food industries when we know that, combined, they do more damage to the planet than any other industries.

Collectively, what we choose to do as individuals can change the world. The collective culture, collective mind, collective diet, and collective choices of all of us can dramatically improve the world, or do otherwise.

I, like everyone, know that the biggest room is the room for improvement.

As far as specific things I’m doing, that would have to include a lot of things. One of them is that I mostly ride a bike to get around. It is something that I have always done. But now it is being looked at as a solution to our problems, and it is. I grow some of my own food. I make food, and I am involved in a network of people who also do the same.

If you look at what Cuba did to save their country after the Soviet Union collapsed, you can get a good idea of what North Americans can be doing.

Cuba once relied on the Soviet Union for food and fuel. But, when the cold war ended and the wall fell, they suddenly found themselves in a terrible situation. Cubans had to change their ways, and they had to do it quickly. They revolutionized their food system. Within a few years the amount of food Cuba was growing increased by several hundred percent. They became involved in biofuel production and in other alternative energy sources. What they did localized their economies, which is more healthful than relying on products and cash flow from distant lands. Suddenly they no longer worried about their next meal, they simply turned to their yard, to neighborhood gardens, and to local farmers’ markets.

I strongly advocate that people turn away from car culture; away from relying on fossil fuels; away from supporting chain restaurants; away from the meat industry; away from celebrity obsession; and away from all of the practices that are greatly damaging the planet.

Much of your book is based in hard facts, convincing statistics, and an immense compilation of relevant resources. Can you describe the course you followed in order to accomplish all of the research to complete the text?

I read a lot. I do a lot of studying to find out what it is that books, newspapers, and other sources of information are saying. I try to find out where people found out the things they learned to make their conclusions. I’m not good at settling for surface answers. I’m not the kind of person who follows gurus or believes everything I hear in the mass media.

When I was an intern at a public radio station they gave me the job of writing the morning news. From that, I realized how much of the stuff you hear on popular news sources is rehashed from other sources. Lots of times they get the facts all wrong, and sometimes they do it on purpose to present a certain slant to a story that serves their agenda. Hollywood, the government, and corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to present information in ways they believe will benefit them. A lot of what you are hearing in the news is some level of mistruth.

To compile my first book, Surgery Electives, I spent loads of time in university libraries reading the textbooks that doctors read to become doctors. The UCLA medical library staff thought I was a medical student. I never told them that I wasn’t, and I had never told them that I was. They helped me in all sorts of ways. I contacted government records offices and got copies of reports and also transcripts of meetings and hearings. I dug up old news stories. I went out and interviewed people, including medical malpractice attorneys, doctors, teachers, legislatures, authors, nurses, government employees, and pharmaceutical and insurance company workers. I met with people who truly repulsed me, including people who did terrible things or who were involved in all sorts of corruption. But I kept a calm manner because I wanted to get information out of them that I could use to write my book in a way that it could be most helpful for the readers. I also spoke with people who were left with their health ruined medical mistakes. I went places and saw things that people like to shove away because it is too terrible to face. A few of the people I interviewed for the book ended up committing suicide because the medical problems they had been left with after surgery mistakes left them debilitated far beyond anything they felt they could deal with. I also spoke to people who lost family members to medical errors, including one particular family whose daughter was killed as two medical students were operating on her for cancer. They accidentally punctured her heart. The autopsy showed that the young woman had no sign of cancer in her body.

What triggered me to write that book was a small article I read in the newspaper one day about a woman who murdered her doctor, and who then committed suicide.

I wrote Sunfood Living by doing lots of reading, and by talking with lots of people. I interviewed slaughterhouse workers, and a whole slew of people who shared information that helped me write the book. I also watched a lot of documentaries and saw things that I would otherwise never care to see.

While writing my books, I developed my own way of writing. I like to include lots of quotes in my books so that the readers know that they are not just reading my opinion, and that when I do state something in a book, I’m basing it on research.

The information that you use to support the central ideas of your book comes from a wide spectrum of sources—everything from quotations about Darwinism to references to Orson Wells’ radio broadcasts to an exploration of the cost of maintaining golf courses. During your inquiries into such a variety of topics, was there anything that you came across that you did not expect to find or that was surprising?

The one thing that surprises me the most is that people have no idea where their food comes from; that most people aren’t involved in growing any of their food, and never have been involved in culinary gardening.

Eating is our most basic need. How could anyone live without coming to the realization that they are completely ignorant about their food sources? But, look at the garbage people are eating. If it looks sexy in an advertisement, they want to put it in their mouth. And it doesn’t seem to matter what is in it, or from where it originated.

I have a friend who eats all sorts of junk food. When I presented her with some basil that I grew, she didn’t believe that it was basil. She thought it only came dried and crumbled in little jars people purchase at the supermarket. When I suggested that she taste it, she winced and said that it needed to be dried first.

We are living in a time when most people depend on stores and restaurants to supply their food. That shows how distanced people are from Nature, and provides evidence of why the world is in such a messed up state of health.

McCabe is the author of Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates and has been a ghost co-writer on health-related books by other authors. He has also been a content and research editor on books written by David Wolfe, including the best selling raw vegan lifestyle book The Sunfood Diet Success System. His next project is the upcoming book Hemp: What the World Needs Now.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s Sunfood Living web site.

The Warrior Within Podcast Series Hosted by Ori Hofmekler

Ori Hofmekler is the author of The Warrior Diet, The Anti-Estrogenic Diet, and the recently released Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat. Every Wednesday, at 9am PST, on VoiceAmericaHealth, Ori offers a live podcast as a part of The Warrior Within: Your Guide to Nutrition, Energy, Sex, and Survival. Past podcasts include “The Three Hidden Obstacles to Weight Loss,” “Diet Solutions,” “Protein Products/Fallacies, Fraud and Failure,” “The Skinny on Aerobics,” “Food Combining and Fitness,” “Fat That Heal, Fat That Kill,” “Hunger—How to Deal with the Chronic Desire to Eat,” “Food for Recovery and Healing,” “Best Training and Nutritional Regimens for Weight Loss,” “The Power Principle—The Hidden Factors Behind Muscle Power,” “Best Foods and Recipes for Leaning & Strengthening the Body,” and many more.

To listen to The Warrior Within, please visit www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaHealth and simply follow the links to Hofmekler’s podcast series. Enjoy!

After serving with the Israeli Special Forces, Ori Hofmekler attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied art, philosophy, and biology, and received a degree in Human Sciences. As founder, editor-in-chief, and publisher of Mind and Muscle Power, a national health and fitness magazine, Hofmekler introduced The Warrior Diet to the public in a monthly column. Later, The Warrior Diet was published, followed by The Anti-Estrogenic Diet and Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat. Nutritional and medical experts, scientists, champion athletes, martial artists, and military and law enforcement instructors have all endorsed Hofmekler’s dietary and training methods. The Warrior Diet, LLC and Defense Nutrition, LLC currently provide nutrition and training workshops and certification seminars.

CLICK HERE to visit VoiceAmericaHealth and The Warrior Within.
CLICK HERE to visit Ori Hofmekler’s blog.
CLICK HERE to learn more about (or order copies of) The Warrior Diet, The Anti-Estrogenic Diet and Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat.

New Article by Paul Pitchford, Author of Healing With Whole Foods

Paul Pitchford is the author of the bestselling book, Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition, as well as the Spanish language edition, Sanando con ailmentos integrales (North Atlantic Books). Pitchford is a leading authority in the field of nutrition and foundational healing. In the following article, Pitchford explains how one can balance their daily diet in order to consume a healthy amount of protein. He also explores the important connection between mind, body, and nutrition.

Protein Perspectives: Modern Nutrition & Eastern Traditions
By Paul Pitchford

There’s been a flurry of media response to the mega-protein diets, and for good reason: the largest selling books worldwide in the past couple years have focused on these diets. And due to this widespread information, virtually everyone I know with an interest in nutrition, both vegetarian and omnivore, has re-assessed personal protein needs. Why has dramatic interest in protein surfaced at this time? We might surmise it’s from stress at this frenetic point in our history, as protein foods antidote stress with stabilizing, relaxing and strengthening therapeutic actions.

Yet despite all the talk about protein, rarely does anyone eat an unrefined food that is more than 25% protein by weight. Thus “eating protein” most often means eating foods that are especially protein rich. Examples of such foods are nuts, seeds, beans, soy products and most meats, including the red meats, pork (sometimes considered a white meat), fish, and fowl as well as eggs.

However, all plants also contain protein, and convincing human studies in the 1950’s by Wm. Rose indicate that when energy needs are met with a food, protein needs are automatically satisfied. For example, potatoes or rice easily meet our protein needs when one simply eats enough to obtain sufficient calories for energy. Nevertheless such foods alone rarely satisfy those who crave “protein.” Research by the world’s foremost protein expert, Dr. Scrimshaw, head of the Nutrition Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides an insight. His cross-cultural studies reveal that, given the opportunity, people will consume three times more protein than their true needs. In the poorer countries, this rarely manifests, but in first world countries, protein over-consumption is commonplace, being most easily accomplished with animal products.

If true protein needs are so easily satisfied, even by complex carbohydrates such as grains, what is really being craved? I feel that when meat is craved, it is the rich, highly assimilable matrix of nutrients in meat that is desired. The animal has performed the work of converting vegetal foods into tissues not so different from our own. Thus many individuals will assimilate iron, certain vitamins, and other nutrients from meat more readily than from grains and beans. This is especially true of those with cultural heritages characterized by meat-centric diets. According to the Ayurvedic healing system of India and Chinese traditional healing arts, meat strengthens us, but only when eaten in moderation. And “moderation” generally means 3-4 ounces a day. This figure corresponds to what many nutritionists now suggest for healthful meat consumption.

When meat, seafood and fowl intake exceeds eight ounces a day, the resultant protein can cause more calcium excretion than is assimilated, thus promoting osteoporosis or bone loss. In fact, osteoporosis is widespread in the developed countries, more so than in poorer areas. Thin, underfed people in India often have stronger bones than big, beefy Americans. This is due to our eating patterns: research over the past 40 years has shown that the single greatest contributor to bone loss is the acids from too much dietary protein. Other research over the same time frame suggests that kidney failure is most frequently a result of excessive protein consumption. Interestingly, traditional Chinese medicine unifies these health concerns with the view that the kidney-adrenals rule the bones. Furthermore, the kidney-adrenals are said to rule the brain—sometimes referred to as the “sea of marrow”. Can Alzheimer’s disease also be traced to protein excess?

Perhaps. In Ayurveda, a sticky, toxic residue known as “ama” is associated with eating animal products. Uncannily, recent research finds that a sticky protein polysaccharide called amyloid plaque obstructs brain pathways in those with Alzheimer’s. (The ancient teacher Gautama Buddha suggested that those interested in developing their higher faculties should avoid meat.) This same plaque obstructs the arteries in most forms of heart and vascular disease and is also implicated in the genesis of cancer.

The most comprehensive nutrition studies in history were performed in China in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. These studies, sponsored by Cornell and Oxford Universities and the Chinese government, showed that Americans, particularly American men, had a 1700 percent greater incidence of heart disease than Asians eating a grain and vegetable based diet. Ninety percent of the protein in these diets is from plant sources. Wealthy Chinese eating rich diets had heart disease similar to the Americans. Not surprisingly, other degenerative diseases, including diabetes and cancer, were less likely in those eating traditional Asian fare.

Nevertheless, I find myself, a vegan for 30 years, recommending animal products to some of my clients with signs of deficiency and weakness. For the many who don’t do well with dairy foods, I often suggest a moderate amount (4 ounces or less, several times a week) of quality meats, meaning organic and free range. The negative, ama/amyloid-forming aspects of meat, fish and fowl can be countered with a vinegar-water marinade as well as cooking them into soups and stews with common spices (e.g., marjoram, rosemary, thyme, fennel, ginger, or sage). Cooking or eating animal foods with abundant vegetables and bean sprouts also reduces ama pathology.

Individuals who over-consume meat may have short term weight loss and fewer sugar imbalances (protein controls sugar cravings), but at the risk of bone loss and kidney degeneration. Additionally meat is extremely high in inflammatory prostaglandins of the type PGE2, which greatly contribute to infections and degenerations such as arthritis. Popular books by the late Dr. Atkins and others who recommend protein-rich diets tell us that carbohydrates need to be restricted in order to lose weight and control blood sugar swings. In my experience they are partially correct. Refined carbohydrates should be restricted. These include the “white foods” such as white pastas, pastries and breads that contain white, refined wheat flour and refined sugar. Also included is white rice.

All such foods are not completely utilized as they are missing minerals, fiber, precious oils, enzymes, and a plethora of phytochemicals needed for proper breakdown and metabolism, not to mention their need in supporting vital immunity. Therefore, refined food residues may stay in the tissues and promote weight gain, among other imbalances. Whole carbohydrate foods—brown rice and unrefined grains, whole grain breads, unrefined sugars (e.g., Rapidura)—do not have this effect.

It should be noted that refined oils that constitute hydrogenated fats found in common peanut butter, candy bars, margarine, and shortening also cannot be fully metabolized and thus are often stored in various tissues and organs, setting the stage for cellulite, carcinomas and other degenerations.

One would expect the protein diets to receive support from mainstream dietitians who, over the years, have been promoters of meat-based diets and recipients of funding from the meat industry. Surprisingly, however, even the American Dietetic Association sees the Atkins diet as extreme beyond reason, calling it “a nightmare.”

Many people know to avoid poor-quality foods as well as the non-foods, yet continue to ingest them. This is because our mind, body and nutrition are closely related. A mind full of toxic desires may all too easily crave toxic foods. Therefore the best starting point in our regenerative process is the mind and its intention. Food and awareness practices have historically been unified, e.g., in both the ancient Orient and Occident, prayer and meditation have always accompanied dietary purifications such as fasting. When people begin with real emotional and spiritual healing, dietary upgrades tend to be second nature and effortless. There are few things more dissatisfying than eating a diet that does not match one’s current mental outlook.

Thus the first priority in my nutritional work is to recommend quieting the mind. This brings mindfulness to all we do, and through such self-awareness, one tends to change toward balance in all life activities.

The second priority is activity. In Far Eastern tradition, without adequate exercise our digestive fire becomes weak, and even the best organic foods may not help us. So I feel that one ideally develops good mental and physical habits before undertaking serious dietary change.

A message from Rumi, ancient Middle Eastern poet:
“Let that which we love
Be what we do
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”

Paul Pitchford studied and apprenticed with masters of pre-Revolutionary Traditional Chinese medicine, nutrition, and Tai Ji and Chan (Zen) meditation. His landmark book, Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition, forms the foundation of his unique dietary teachings, which unify Eastern and Western therapies. Over the past 12 years, Paul has been a key lecturer with the prestigious Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City. His work has become a primary impetus behind the most fundamental, clinically effective and innovative dietary movement today, widely known as “whole foods nutrition.” He sees a universal shift to whole foods nutrition as essential for overcoming ecologic ravages to the Earth as well as quelling pervasive disease and degeneration among her peoples. Paul has been teaching nutrition in the context of foundational healing for 38 years. This approach prioritizes three basic integrative steps in a person’s pathway to enduring health: a) awareness practices, b) mindful movement including yoga, Tai Ji and Qi Gong, and c) nutrition based on regional, unrefined (whole) foods. He has designed and taught programs at Heartwood Institute regularly for the last 25 years. He currently receives invitations to teach worldwide and has given seminars at colleges, schools of acupuncture, nutrition and various healing arts, and on major radio shows.

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