Natural Selection

Just finished watching the new FoodMatters film “Hungry for Change” which you can watch absolutely free for another 5 days. It is a must see for anyone who is overweight or has ever tried to lose weight by dieting. The film presents some radical ideas about the nature of the food and dieting industry and how both of them actually promote weight gain. The food industry via the use of nutrient poor and addictive ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and flavor enhancers not only cause adverse effects on the body such neurological problems and bone demineralization but contribute to the addictive nature of these nutrient poor foods thereby causing weight gain.

The diet industry still promotes the idea of deprivation to the body which is never sustainable. In order to lose weight (and heal disease), the body truly needs nourishment and detoxification and a rebuilding of self love and self esteem. The film delivers some motivational interviews from experts in the field as well as everyday people who have healed themselves by nourishing themselves from the inside out.

So check out this gallery “Time” has published from the book “Hungry Beast”. It chronicles the amount and type of foods families from across the world purchase in one week. What I notice most is two things. The quantity of food varies significantly across countries (check out Chad versus Germany for example) and the more Western the family tends to be, the more processed the food choices become. The Americans, for example have very little fresh produce on their table whereas the family from Ecuador have nothing but fresh produce. It seems economic development comes with a price, more marketing, poor health and the environmental impact of all that packaging.

Check out the trailer from the documentary “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead”

This movie will absolutely change your life. Find out what happens in the cultivation and processing of food, how nutrient deficiencies lead to disease and how pharmaceuticals are NOT the answer to fixing what chronic malnutrition has destroyed.

You need to check out this movie

I recently read the comment that a major clothing brand aimed at teenage girls considered size 10 to be plus size. This is ludicrous, not only because they are lumbering girls with an unrealistic adult size system which they are never going to be able to comply with as they get older but they are being given the message early on that that normal and average sizes are grossly overweight (the average size of Australian women is 12-14).

What makes this scenario worse is that there seems to be competing pressure from the fast food industry, who directly market to this age group, to eat nutrient poor food which is laden with additives, saturated fat and sugar. Food which is inevitably going to make them put on weight and also leads to conditions such as anxiety and depression and may even affect their fertility in the future.

What are we producing? Girls who have unhealthy eating habits and who now have low self esteem because they do not fit into a now unattainable mould of what society considers to be beautiful.

On the other extreme you can now see how girls develop eating disorders (8.8% of adolescent girls). These girls typically have anxiety, depression and the extreme need for perfection and control. How do they get control in a world where we can’t even get the messages right. Society should be teaching girls to nourish their bodies (and their brains) and love their body not using competing marketing messages aimed at their fears about not fitting in.

There seems to be a recurrent theme in the media lately about girls in the west going through puberty earlier and earlier. So why is it so and isn’t it enough that young girls are being exposed to sexually explicit images (anyone seen a Rihanna video clip lately?) and that the purpose of marketing to the tween age group (8-12) is all about making them look older (eg. padded cropped tops). Now they have to cope with the early onset of menstruation when they are not emotionally developed enough to deal with it (nor should they be). Their bodies are behaving in such a way as to prepare them for childbirth and yet they haven’t even had any sex education. How is a girl in the 6-10 age group supposed to wrap their head around that.

The average age of menarche (menstruation onset) in Victorian times was 17-18 which may be as much about malnutrition as anything else but what does that say about our society when you have girls as young as six showing signs of puberty (eg breast tissue) because of their weight (fat cells can produce estrogen). It’s not that I’m being judgemental, I’m just concerned about these girls because precocious puberty (that is before the age of 8) causes emotional disturbances, stress, confusion and even depression. Then there’s the physical risks; stunted bone growth, breast cancer and diabetes.

And what of diet? You know the urban myth? They’re putting hormones in the chicken. Well that’s not quite true but the meat industry does use these chemicals called ‘hormone growth promotants’. The CSIRO has set safe limits for the presence of these chemicals in the meat and the statement has been made that there is more estrogen in 200mls of milk than 500g of beef but the problem I have is these chemicals may not be unsafe in isolation but isn’t there a cumulative effect when you combine them with all the other toxins in our environment called ‘endocrine disruptors’.

The most common type of endocrine disruptors are chemicals that have a structure similar to estrogen so the estrogen receptors in the body recognise them as such. The most prolific of these are those used to harden plastic; the phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA). These chemicals leach out of the plastic when heated (even washing with hot water). As per usual Food Standards Australia are following the American lead and waiting until a review of safety is concluded until they remove these chemicals from the manufacture of plastics (read the factsheet here). It reminds me of their responses to unnecessary food additives ie evidence of harm has to be demonstrated before they remove them…..um shouldn’t it be the other way around? Introduce them if they are safe? Given that in Canada the chemical BPA has been found in more than 9 out of 10 adults (read the story here), and I can’t imagine Australian rates being much different, doesn’t it make sense to reduce our exposure if there is any risk at all. It’s a sad state of affairs when manufacturers of baby bottles have to take it upon themselves to remove BPA which is what is starting to happen.

Other endocrine disruptors which directly mimic estrogen include triclosan (found in antibacterial hand washes, toothpastes and mouth wash), Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (flame retardants), parabens (preservatives in skin care), dioxins (sanitary products) and pesticides. Phthalates are also used in skin care, shampoos, cosmetics and sunscreen.

The official average age of menarche in Australia at the moment is 11-12 but when you hear anecdotal stories of girls as young as six showing the first signs of puberty and primary schools having to move personal development classes forward by years something doesn’t sit right with me. And what about the future generations? There is new evidence that these chemicals disrupt genes and get transferred to the babies of these girls (read this report) who will then be subjected to their own toxic load during life.

And I haven’t even started on boys, what are these estrogen mimickers doing to them…..?

Is it a surprise that today’s generation of women are experiencing depression at higher rates than their mothers and grandmothers.  No. With poor nutrition due to over processed foods and the diminished soil quality feeding our crops coupled with the toxic society we live in (eg phthalates in plastics) it is any wonder that any woman is getting adequate nutritional precursors to serotonin (the happiness neurotransmitter) and able to convert those precursors.  Given this is all taking place in a society where unrealistic expectations are often placed on women to have both have a successful career and raise a family there is no surprise in this story at all.