This is How Dairy Affects Your Hormones. Get Ready to Ditch It Today!

By now, it’s common knowledge that non-organic cow’s milk is one of the worst choices you can buy at the store due to the excess hormones, antibiotics, steroids, pesticides and who knows what else it all contains. The food industry has tried to mislead us into believing that organic cow’s milk (and its products) comes with pure innocence and is made from cows that graze gracefully and happily in fields all day with the cleanest of air, water, fresh grass and more. Regardless that most none of this is true, cow’s milk is still one of the worst health food choices you can make for many reasons, no matter what kind of cows it comes from. The main reason is for how it affects your hormones.

All cows that produce milk are pregnant, organically raised, fed, etc. or not. It makes no difference that their milk doesn’t have added hormones considering that alone, cow’s milk contain over 60 different hormones without anything being added to it. Now, while all of us have different hormone situations going on, there is no logical research that says we need to take in added hormones from another mammal.

Why Ditching Dairy is Important for Your Hormones:

Cows are pregnant nearly 300 days of the year and Harvard Health shares that the more times a cows has been pregnant during that year, the more hormones she produces through her milk every time. Cows were not made to stay pregnant 300 days of the year and they develop infections due to this high demand for production, not to mention may be subject to further disease and bacteria when antibiotics aren’t used (such as in organic farming practices).

So, what about a cow’s hormones so detrimental to our own health?

Here are some things to consider:

1. Insulin Issues

One of the primary reasons dairy is linked to acne is that it raises insulin in the body. All dairy contains IG1, or insulin-growth factor. It raises our levels of insulin, which causes blood sugar swings that lead to acne. Acne is strongly influenced by hormonal changes, which is one reason so many teenagers struggle during puberty. Why would we put ourselves through that anymore than necessary? No matter what kind of dairy you choose, you’re taking in excess insulin growth like factor. Sadly, it’s promoted as a healthy option for body builders looking to bulk up, but over time, it’s not a healthy choice and will likely cause insulin problems that lead to overeating, sugar cravings, and poor blood sugar control.

2. Mood Swings

Dairy also contains hormones that can lead to mood swings. Estrogen and testosterone are our sex hormones, and when they get out of balance according to our bodies’ needs, we suffer mood swings as a result. Dairy milk promotes excess estrogen in the body due to it containing estrogen from female cows. At the same time, milk naturally contains androgenic properties, so it raises testosterone in the body and can cause bulking quickly. It’s absolutely chock-full of all these hormones we don’t need scurrying through out bodies. Think about it this way: the dairy you consume contains hormones from the female cow and the male cow that were used during impregnation. That doesn’t sound so healthy or appetizing, now, does it?

Dairy milk accounts for about 80 percent of estrogen consumed through the human diet, along with the fact that milk from pregnant cows (which is how all milk products are produced) contains about 33 times as much estrogen as milk from non-pregnant cows.

Mood swings inarguably happen due to swift hormone fluctuations and women aren’t the only ones to suffer. Men can too, which is one reason dairy isn’t a healthy choice for anyone looking to have a healthier, happy and more stable mood. How about some tastier, much healthier mood foods instead, all hormone-free?

3. Cancer Causing

The jury is in: milk causes cancer in any form, organic or not. Check this out: Harvard Health studies show that dairy milk and cheese products led to testicular cancer in men ages 20-39 and have been found to affect breast, colon, and prostate cancer heavily as well. And then there’s the casein protein found in milk that has also been linked to cancer. Even without hormones or even lactose, casein is a detrimental protein to our health and should be avoided however possible.

Help Your Hormones: Ditch Dairy

Sadly, the food industry would have you believe you need to consume milk to be healthy, but we know that’s not the case. Quit believing the lies around cow’s milk and have some other calcium-rich options instead, all free of these scary hormones.

http://www.onegreenplanet.org

Hormones in Dairy Wastewater Persist for Years

by Melissa Breyer

A new study has found that wastewater from large dairy farms contains notable concentrations of estrogenic hormones that, instead of breaking down, can persist for years. The unusual behavior, unknown to scientists before, involves estrogens quickly converting from one form to another in the absence of oxygen – resulting in halted biodegradation, and as an extra bonus, making them much harder to detect.

The study, led by researchers at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center(ISTC), appears in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The problem starts when lactating cows create estrogenic hormones that are excreted in their waste, said ISTC senior research scientist Wei Zheng, leader of the study. In large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) the hormones end up in wastewater, (euphemistically called lagoons). The water is used to fertilize crops, and although there are federal regulations limiting certain agricultural nutrients from polluting rivers, streams, lakes or groundwater, the regulations do not protect groundwater and surface waters from contamination by animal hormones and veterinary pharmaceuticals.

Animal hormone concentrations in agricultural waste are 100 to 1,000 times higher than those detected in human sewage – and large dairy farms are one of the major sources of estrogens in the environment, according to Zheng.

“These estrogens are present at levels that can affect the [reproductive functions of] aquatic animals,” Zheng said. Even low levels of estrogens can “feminize” animals that spend their lives in the water, for example, causing male fish to have low sperm counts or to develop female characteristics, compromising their ability to reproduce.

“Hormones that end up in surface or groundwater can pollute sources of drinking water for humans,” Zheng said. “The estrogens may also be taken up by plants – a potential new route into the food chain,” he added. “We need to develop a strategy to prevent these hormones from building up in the environment.”

source> http://www.treehugger.com

An Interview with Mr. John Robbins – part 3

Interviewer:  So I want to ask you about food additives and particularly in animal production; there are a lot of hormones and other additives. We practice vegetarianism but we also don’t eat eggs. There used to be a feeling that it is one of the most perfect proteins. Could you speak a little about eggs and the vegan lifestyle?

John:  Well, I don’t eat eggs either. The idea that eggs are the perfect protein stems from rat experiments. They found that rats, baby rats, prospered when they were fed eggs, so they sort of made the assumption from that. This is originally the research. A lot has been done since, but that’s how it first got started. Well it turns out that baby rats’ needs are so different than a human baby’s needs. Rat mother’s milk is about 45% protein, a human mothers’ milk is about 8% protein. So it’s not a really comparable food. I look at the constituency of human breast milk as nature’s answer to the question, “What is the ideal food for a human baby?” I don’t look at what makes a rat grow the fastest, I look at what will help a human being thrive, and that’s obviously human breast milk for a human infant.

What we’ve learned since in medical science is that the need for animal protein was vastly exaggerated, because many of the studies were done and funded by animal product industries – the National Dairy Council, the Egg Board, the Meat Board, the National Cattlemen’s Association, a whole slew of industry groups that profit from people thinking they need to eat their products to get adequate protein.

Plant-based proteins are more than adequate, they are excellent. And they don’t come along with the saturated fat, cholesterol and these other things that the animal proteins come with that do us such damage. If you want to have a lean, fit, thriving body that operates on all cylinders, gives you the most mental clarity, the most emotional serenity, gives you the most physical strength and strongest immune system, eat a plant-based diet.

You don’t need eggs for protein; you don’t need meat for protein. I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me, “You’re a vegetarian? Where do you get your protein?” Well I get it from plants, I get it from beans, I get it from seeds and nuts, I get it from whole grains, I get it from vegetables, because I don’t fill my diet with a bunch of junk food, and I don’t fill my diet with a bunch of sugar, white flour and things like that. I make every calorie count. I don’t have a lot of wasted empty calories in the diet that I consume. Therefore the protein percentage doesn’t have to be so high.

If the calories you’re eating, most of them, are junk and empty, then the few remaining ones that have any nutrition better be solid protein in order for you to get enough. But if all your foods are good, then protein comes from all the foods that you eat. You don’t have to say, “There’s where I get my protein.” I’m getting it from all of the foods that I eat. There is good protein in whole grains, fresh vegetables and certainly in beans and in soy products.

Interviewer:  So vegetarian and especially a vegan diet is a way to become, as in the title of your new book, “Healthy at 100.”

John:  Well yes, I’ve looked at cultures where people have thrived for the longest times, where they’re not just champions of longevity and that they live long but they live long, healthy lives. And their elder hoods are filled with fitness, mental clarity, contribution, joy and beauty; and they almost always eat plant-based diets or very close to this.

Interviewer:  Yeah, that’s interesting. I also wanted to congratulate you on the “Shining World Leadership Award” for humanitarianism from Supreme Master Ching Hai. She was very excited and impressed with the nobility you demonstrated in walking away from what could’ve been a very wealthy lifestyle, in the name of your values and your choices.

John:  Well I did it in the name of all of our aspirations for a humane and sustainable world. It wasn’t just for me. It really was for the planet, for all of us who are striving and inspiring towards creating a spiritually fulfilling, socially just and environmentally sustainable human presence on this planet.

Interviewer:  Thank you so much for your work because I’ve read that for a couple of years after “A Diet for a New America” came out, beef sales in the US dropped almost 20% and there’s been Howard Lyman and a number of other activists that have brought out the terrors of what has gone on in the beef industry. So I think it’s interesting to see the ripple effect 20 years later.

John:   And I mean you can translate that 20 % reduction of beef consumption into how many fewer heart attacks occurred, how many fewer cases of cancer occurred, how much less diabetes there was. Not that these epidemics aren’t still major issues, but they have been to a degree ameliorated by that reduction. You can also translate it into how many square miles of tropical rainforests are still standing that would otherwise would have been destroyed? How many species are still with us that would otherwise have been extinguished? How much less water pollution we have to deal with, how much less greenhouse gases are in our atmosphere as a result of that reduction? We’re still trashing the environment, but this was a big step; and I will feel fulfilled only when it is a step that many other people take, and we continue on that path, because the day that slaughter houses are a memory, the day that world hunger is a memory, the day that environmental destruction is a memory, will be the day that I rejoice.

Dr. Neal Barnard: Eating Right for Cancer Survival (part 1)

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Each year over 12 million people across the globe are diagnosed with cancer and 7.6 million succumb to the disease. The numbers are projected to continue rising, with an estimated of 12 million deaths in 2030.

Today we have the honor to share series featuring excerpts from The Cancer Project’s “Eating Right for Cancer Survival,” a two-set DVD of presentations by esteemed nutrition researcher and author Dr. Neal Barnard, MD that is a companion to the book The Cancer Survivor’s Guide written by Dr. Barnard and registered dietician Jennifer Reilly.

Dr. Barnard is the president of The Cancer Project, a US-based non-profit organization advancing cancer prevention and survival through nutrition education and research. Since its founding in 2004, the Project has strived to promote the vegan diet as the answer to cancer.

The Cancer Project is an affiliate of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group created by Dr. Barnard in 1985 that is comprised of physicians and concerned citizens in the US wishing to improve public health. The Committee is also actively involved in raising awareness of the benefits of a plant-based diet through such projects as the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program and seeking to amend federal nutrition guidelines.

Dr. Barnard has served as the principal investigator on many clinical studies examining the links between diet and health and his work has been published in top scientific and medical journals. He is often interviewed by the national media in the US for his perspectives on important issues in nutrition, health and medicine. We are now pleased to show a segment from “How Foods Fight Cancer,” a chapter from the “Eating Right for Cancer Survival” DVD.

Welcome, thank you for joining us. In today’s program we’re going to zero in on how nutrition affects not just our risk of getting cancer or helping us to stay free of cancer, but also if we have this condition already how we can use nutrition for better survival.

Now, I have two points before we get started. The first is let’s set aside blame. There is a natural tendency. If you’ve got any kind of serious health condition to think, “What caused this? Did I cause this? Or did somebody else cause it?” Well, I understand that but for now let’s just set that aside.

And the second point is work with your doctor or health care provider. All of the information that you are about to receive is designed to be used in addition to the tests or treatments your doctor might prescribe, not instead of them. Okay, let’s get started.

First of all, what is cancer? Cancer starts in the inside of a cell. Inside the nucleus is DNA. That’s the blueprint that makes each cell what it is, and makes you what you are. But that DNA can be easily damaged. And when it is, instead of that cell staying put and doing its normal job, it starts multiplying out of control. It’s like a weed that then sends roots into the flower bed disrupting the other plants.

And a little bit of it can break off, get into the bloodstream and spread somewhere else in the body where it does the same thing, spreading and damaging other tissues. That’s what cancer is. But there are certain things that make it worse and certain things that can help make it better.

In the worse category are hormones. If a woman has breast cancer, the female sex hormones – estrogens, they tend to fuel its growth and they make it more likely not only that it will occur in the first place but more likely to spread. If a man has prostate cancer, the male sex hormone – testosterone does exactly the same thing. It encourages its growth, and encourages its spread.

Now the first inklings that cancer had anything to do with diet came from comparisons between different countries. If you compare Japan to the United States for example, a Japanese woman is much less likely to develop cancer compared to an American woman. But if she gets cancer she is much more likely to survive. Why would that be?

Well, the first theory was well Japanese women are thin. And that’s important because body fat actually acts as a factory for making estrogens. The more fat you have, the more it cranks out estrogens, I mean the female sex hormones, into the bloodstream. And as they are coursing around through the blood they are just looking for that one cancer cell. And they act like fertilizer on weeds. They make it grow, they make it spread. They make the disease much more aggressive. Well, that’s part of it.

Diet plays a role even if a woman is not heavy. And if a woman is on a diet that’s high in fat and very low in fiber… you know what I’m talking about when I say fiber? I mean plant roughage.

That kind of diet also increases the amount of estrogen in her blood, the amount of fertilizer on the weeds if you will. Well, how does that happen? Well, researchers learned a long time ago that if a woman goes on a diet that has a lot of fat in it and not very much fiber, the amount of estrogen in her bloodstream goes up within just a couple of weeks. It’s measurably higher than it was before. Part of the reason for this is that fiber helps your body get rid of the extra estrogens.

Pictures this – your liver is filtering your blood every minute of every day and it’s looking for things that don’t belong there. And it will find extra estrogen and it’s in the blood, the liver pulls it out, it sends it down through a little tube called the bile duct into the intestinal tract and sends it out with the wastes.

So the liver is filtering the blood, hears an estrogen, “I don’t think we need you anymore, let’s get rid of you.” It pulls it out, sends it down the bile duct, into the intestinal tract, out it goes. Good system.

Only problem is it depends on one thing and it depends on fiber. If you ate plenty of fiber, I mean vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains, then that little estrogen that the liver found, it sent it down to the bile duct into the intestinal tract, it hooked onto the fiber and the fiber is what carried it away. But let’s say my lunch was skimmed milk, yogurt, chicken breast.

How much fiber is in those foods? Well, they’re not plants; they don’t have plant roughage. There is no fiber in any of those foods. There is no fiber in anything from an animal. So what happens? The liver is filtering the blood finds the estrogen, sends it down the bile duct into the intestinal tract. Where is my fiber? Where is my fiber? Where is my fiber? There isn’t any fiber! So what does it do?

It goes back into the bloodstream. It’s reabsorbed again. And it circulates around the body and then it arrives back at the liver and the liver says, “What are you doing here?” And the liver actually removes that estrogen again, sends it down bile duct into the intestinal tract. Looking for fiber, looking for fiber, looking for fiber, there isn’t any, it’s reabsorbed again!

And this estrogen does this circle we call enterohepatic circulation. “Entero” means intestinal tract, “hepatic” means liver, like hepatitis. And this works not just for estrogen, it also works for testosterone. A man who is at higher risk for prostate cancer, if he can get rid of extra testosterone he uses that same system. If he has lots of fiber in his diet, his testosterone level will be adequate, but not excessive because the liver finds the testosterone and gets rid of it.

Same thing for cholesterol. You’ve heard about how oats will reduce cholesterol, you know what I’m talking about. Well, this is how it works: You ate oats, they’re rich in fiber. The liver finds the cholesterol, sends it down the bile duct and its going down there and if the oats or other kinds of fiber are there it carries it out with the waste and your cholesterol level goes down.

Now that’s the theory, does it actually work? Well, the answer is yes it does. There have been a number of studies that have looked at the effect of changing the diet on not only hormones but also on cancer rates. And there are two that I want to share with you very quickly.

One was at the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA). They looked at women who already had breast cancer; there were about 900 of them. And what they found was that as the time went by the risk of dying of that disease increased by 40% for every thousand grams of fat the women consumed per month.

Now to picture what I’m talking about. Let’s say you’re on a plant- based diet, without animal products, without a lot of added fat. There is really not much fat in that kind of diet. For comparison purposes let’s take a typical American diet that might have lots of cheeseburgers and gravy and French fries, a lot of fat in it right?

Those two differ by a good thousand to 1500 grams of fat every single month. That’s good for a 40 to 60% difference in whether you are dead or alive at any time point down the road.

Now another study called the Women’s Intervention Nutrition Study, the WINS Study, was very important. They brought in women who had breast cancer. And what they did was they asked them to lower the fat content in their diet, and the women did this. They compared the women on the diet who were getting about 30, 33 grams of fat. That’s really low. They compared them to a control group, that got about 51 grams of fat, that’s lower than average but not as good as the people on the special diet.

They then tracked one thing. These women had been treated for breast cancer, did it come back? Or did they get a new kind of cancer because as you may know, if you’ve been diagnosed with cancer before, breast cancer, you are more likely not only to get a recurrence but to get a new cancer again.

And what they found was absolutely being on this diet did help prevent it. It cut the risk of a recurrence or a new cancer by 24%. Same thing with prostate cancer. Researchers have looked at men with prostate cancer, changed their diets, and looked to see does this really make a difference for me? The answer is yes.

Dr. Dean Ornish, do you know his work? He did the research studies on showing that you could actually reverse heart disease. He used a low fat vegetarian diet, exercise, and stress reduction which is why he didn’t do the study in Washington D.C. (USA) where I live. And what he found is that it does reverse heart disease. But then he put this to work for men who had prostate cancer and the results were amazing.

Ninety-three men, everybody had prostate cancer… As you may know if you have prostate cancer you don’t necessarily have to have treatment right away. Many of these men are older, they can sometimes wait and they track a blood test called PSA – Prostate Specific Antigen. If it’s not going up too fast you just wait. If it is going up fast, you need treatment, you can’t wait anymore.

And what they found was that half of the group put on a vegetarian diet compared to the other half that didn’t change their diet. The men on the vegetarian diet showed their PSA wasn’t rising, it started to fall. It fell about four percent over the course of this trial. That’s good. That means we’re re-gaining our health and there wasn’t a single person in that part of the study that needed to have treatment.

But in the control group, their PSA was going up. It went up about six percent and when you looked at the group, out of 49 men in that part of the study, six of them couldn’t wait, their cancer was aggressively advancing. They had to have treatment.

And there’s another wrinkle in all of this. There’s a specific effect apparently, of dairy products. Men who consume more dairy products, seem to be at higher risk of prostate cancer. Now we need more research on this but two large Harvard (University) studies have shown that when men consume a lot of dairy products, their risk of prostate cancer is substantially higher than that of other men.

And the reason, maybe, is that dairy products change a man’s bloodstream. What they do is they increase the amount of something called IGF-1. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this? IGF-1 “Insulin-like growth factor number one.” I think of it as a little bit like cholesterol. You know how if I take cholesterol, a blood sample and I measure cholesterol, that tells me what? It tells me, are you going to have a heart problem down the road? Not necessarily right now, but 10 years from now.

If I draw a blood sample and I check your IGF-1 level, “Insulin-like growth factor number one,” if it’s higher, that means your risk of certain cancers is higher too. Prostate cancer for men, breast cancer for women. Why would milk cause IGF-1 to increase? Which it does.

Well think about this: What’s milk’s job? What is milk for? Milk’s job is to help a little baby calf grow fast. And once the calf is big enough to graze, there’s no need for milk anymore, right? So, if milk’s job is to make things grow, it includes not just protein, not just fat, not just sugar, that’s the lactose that’s in the milk, it also contains hormones and growth factors. And inside the calf’s body, it causes the production of more growth factors that allow the tissues to grow.

One of these – IGF-1 is a very potent stimulus for cancer cell growth. If I mix IGF-1 in a test tube with cancer cells, they grow like crazy! Well, a man or a woman who drinks three glasses of milk per day, has a 10% rise in the amount of IGF-1 in his or her bloodstream. So, it’s very rapid. It happens very, very quickly.

So many researchers are now saying, “Well, if I don’t want to have things growing in my body, maybe I should not be having food that causes growth factors to be produced.”

We deeply appreciate Dr. Neal Barnard’s important work in the field of cancer prevention and for actively seeking to enhance overall public health. We firmly support him in his call for everyone to quickly adopt the vegan diet, the key to well-being and longevity.

For more details on The Cancer Project, please visit http://www.CancerProject.org
The two-set DVD “Eating Right for Cancer Survival” and The Cancer Survivor’s Guide, a free to download e-book, are available at the same website

Got the facts on Milk?

Traveling across the United States from Los Angeles to Washington DC, a group of four people were determined to uncover the truth behind milk in the documentary Got the Facts on Milk?

Here with us today is the film’s director, producer, and writer, Shira Lane, and sound mixer Jennifer Ricciardi, to share with us some shocking facts about milk.

Supreme Master TV:
How did you get the idea of venturing into this? Who was the main person who got the idea?

Shira:
That would be me. In summer 2006 my allergies were increasing when I was here in America, and I’m allergic to milk and dairy products. And one day, I walked into a school, and on the walls there were these big advertisements that were telling kids, “Oh! Drink your milk and it will make you grow tall!” And for girls, “Drink your milk! It will make you skinny!”

I was an actress, and I was filming a film. And, once I finished that film, I just called my manager, my agent, and I said, “Don’t send me out to auditions anymore. I’m just going to drop everything and do this documentary.” And that’s how it started!

Jennifer:
I’m allergic to milk as well. I don’t have as severe allergies as she does, but, growing up as a kid, I always had ear infections. I always had bronchitis. Every time winter would come, there’d be some sort of cold. I would always get sick. And I never made the connection until I was older. And then I, probably about ten years ago, stopped drinking milk and all of a sudden, I didn’t get sick anymore.

An estimated 75 percent of adults worldwide are lactose intolerant. In some Asian and African countries, almost 90 percent of the population lacks the ability to digest lactose, resulting in abdominal symptoms such as stomach cramps, bloating, and gas.

Shira:
It’s completely normal to be lactose intolerant. Once we stop weaning, it’s natural for our body to stop creating lactase which is what breaks down the lactose. Lactose is the sugar in milk.

Most people that are lactose intolerant cannot break it down… and then it just sits in the large intestine, and that’s what creates gas and bloating and running to the toilet.

Jennifer:
People don’t get to know this information. The reason why they don’t get to know it is because they’re not making money off of broccoli. They’re making money off cheese and macaroni. They’re getting the money from that, the people are unhealthy, then the unhealthy people are paying for all the healthcare services, which again, drives our economy. Economics is such a major player in why we don’t get to know this information.

In a study by Harvard University in the USA, hormones in milk have been shown to cause cancer, especially breast, prostate and testicular cancer

Shira:
A hormone is made to make something grow. That’s what hormones do. RBGH, is an injection that they give, it’s like a stimulant. So the cow will create a ten percent increase of milk.

This has a number of effects. First of all, it raises the IGF1 in the milk, which is a hormone that causes breast cancer. This is known. And this reason alone is why nowhere else in the world are they allowed to inject RBGH into the cows.

Second is you’re putting a lot of pressure because now ten percent more on the udder of a cow. So you’re pushing the cow a lot more. What happens is then the cow gets mastitis, which is an infection in the udder, because it’s pushed and it’s milked three times a day.

This infection gets into the milk. It’s called a somatic-cell count. This is how the farmers count it. And, this somatic cell count, it’s puss because it’s just infection. It’s in the milk.

Supreme Master TV:
So let’s talk about the effects of milk? What did you find?

Shira:
Whew, a lot. One fact is that milk does not help for the bones. The calcium in milk does not help build strong bones.

Supreme Master TV:
Why is that?

Shira:
Well, because in milk you have protein and…

Jennifer:
Animal protein.

Shira:
Animal protein. You also have calcium but you have animal protein. When you consume animal protein, caffeine and sodium, these three things, your blood becomes acidic. And for your body to buffer it and to bring it back down to its level, it has to take calcium from somewhere. And so it takes it usually from the bones.

And we have a chart that the countries that consume the most milk are the countries that have the most osteoporosis and the most hip fractures. They have the weakest bones. It’s actually opposite of what you would think. Yes, there is calcium in milk but no, is it doing your body good? No.

Supreme Master TV:
So have you been a vegetarian for a long time?

Jennifer:
It was this documentary that changed my mind. I wasn’t beforehand. And so ever since, basically we started this documentary I started as not eating any sort of animal products and I’ve felt great ever since I’ve done it.

The only reason why I can keep working and the only reason why I’m not sick is because of my diet, and because of the foods that I eat and the foods that I don’t eat.

Shira:
I used to be a huge carnivore.

Shira:
But as soon as we did this documentary, I have to say this documentary made me more than I made the documentary because I just can’t touch it.

I know what it does to my body. I know what it does to the environment.

Supreme Master TV:
And you went straight to vegan?

Jennifer:
All of us went straight to vegan, yeah.

Shira:
There’s a lot of information that people just don’t know. And it’s like there’s a saying that if a slaughterhouse had glass walls, everybody would be vegetarian. Just not long ago we had a meat recall. 140,000,000 tons of meat were recalled because some kind of activist went in there with a camera, undercover camera and showed what was happening.

Only then did they do the recall. Sick cows are being put into the food chain. You don’t know, and then they go to hamburgers and even fine restaurants’ steaks.

Jennifer:
As we would go out to some of these ranches and these dairy farms and I was amazed at the conditions that the animals live in. They’re standing in their own feces all day. And they can’t  walk around– a couple of feet on either side.

How is that being served to us? How is that healthy? How can you look at those animals and say that’s correct, that’s the way we should treat other living beings?

According to a report issued by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock raising is responsible for about 18 percent of carbon emissions causing global warming.

This is more than the emissions from forms of transportation combined. Meat production is also the main factor of pollution through animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.

Shira:
The UN report called Livestock’s Long Shadow, it came out in 2006, said that cows produce gas, coming from either end, let’s just say that. And it’s called methane. Methane has 23 times the heat grabbing capacity of CO2.

It stays in the atmosphere longer and it’s a very dangerous gas. And we have so much animal agriculture and it’s constantly growing, because our appetite for animal agriculture is growing.

Today, you can have a vegan burger and it tastes just like meat. And that’s coming from someone that was a huge carnivore. It is so easy, and it’s just a lot better for the environment. It’s just the whole circle, really.

Jennifer:
If you just limited what you’re taking as far as animal products and changed your diet over to more of a plant-based diet and didn’t have dairy, you’re first of all healthier, you’re protecting the environment, and not as many animals are being abused.

Shira:
A vegan driving a hummer has less contribution to global warming than a carnivore driving a hybrid.

Shira:
We can stop global warming. And it’s not that, “Oh, we have to, find newer energy, and nuclear plants.” No, you can just start it with what you put on your table and what you put on your plate.

The Mayo Clinic in the US stated that milk is classified as a major allergen, among the top eight food products.

Shira:
A lot of people are allergic to milk, a lot of people have problems, may not be allergic to milk but just their body doesn’t tolerate it well, let’s just put it that way. If your kid has respiratory problems, ear infections, anything, anything, they don’t need cow’s milk.

Jennifer:
It was actually Dr. Neal Barnard who showed us a study that they found out that there is a product that’s in milk that’s called casein, which is addictive.

And it’s concentrated in cheese, and that’s why people love cheese so much and they won’t give it up; they go, “I could give up everything, but not cheese”.

And I think the food companies have taken advantage of the casein.

Jennifer:
Cheese is addicting.

Supreme Master TV:
Oh, yes.

Shira:
Another thing is that you have these milk derivatives. You have milk and then you dry it down so you have butter, and then you’re left with skim milk.

Sell as much skim milk as you can and then you’re left with something else. You’ve got whey, you’ve got casein, you’ve got all these different powders sort of leftover. So what they’ve done, they’ve created markets for it.

So they’ve gone to all these companies saying, “Oh, you know, lactic acid can be used as a good preservative.” Some lactic acid is a chemical formula, but some can be derived from whey.

Let’s use casein because that’s a good protein. Let’s use whey, because now they want to use it for all the body builders. So in a way, they’re trying to get into every single product. So what’s happening is you don’t even know what’s in your food anymore. You really don’t.
With hope for the future, Shira shares her message for Supreme Master Television viewers.

Shira:
So what I advise would be is, first of all, go to farmers’ markets. Find your farmers’ markets. Buy locally. Know what’s in your food. Learn about your food because you are what you eat.

If you were to eat correctly, you’re actually saving yourself a lot of money. So my advice would be try to eat whole foods, meaning, you know, don’t go get calcium pills.

Eat foods that have calcium, meaning green leafy vegetables. And I think we have to start understanding that the earth works in a whole , you know if we do body good, we’ll be doing the environment good and the environment will be doing us good.

Shira Lane and Jennifer Ricciardi, we are grateful for your commitment in revealing the truth about milk through your documentary.

George Eisman: Growth Hormones in Animal Products Equals Cancer

George Eisman, a highly respected vegan registered dietitian in the United States, will explain how consuming animal products causes cancer as well as how the animal agriculture industry destroys public health.
Mr. Eisman served as a faculty member in dietetics and nutrition at several universities and colleges and has worked in a children’s hospital and a nursing home, as well as for public health agencies in four states. He founded The Association of Vegetarian Dietitians and Nutrition Educators, is the co-founder and first Chairman-Elect of the Vegetarian Nutrition Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association, is the director of the Coalition for Cancer Prevention Through Plant-Based Eating and is also an Advisory Board Member of EarthSave International. Mr. Eisman is the author of two books, “The Most Noble Diet” and “A Basic Course in Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition.”

I’ve been vegetarian for over 40 years now. And I’ve been vegan for about 28 years. And my life’s work is trying to make people aware of the connection between what they eat and their risk of diseases like cancer. And a vegan diet is by far the best way to lower your cancer risk.

There was a study done in Japan a few years ago that found when people in rural areas went from eating animal products just once a week to three times a week, the breast cancer rate went up by 70%. If you can find a drug that would lower people’s breast cancer rate by 70%, you could make a billion dollars. So all you have to do is get them to cut animal products out of their diet and it goes down by that much.

There were an estimated 12.7 million cancer cases diagnosed around the world in 2008, and this number is expected to rise to 21 million by 2030. Cancer is a term used for more than 100 diseases and is characterized by out-of-control cell reproduction.

To be healthy, the body needs a constant supply of new cells and their regulation is an orderly path of growth, division, and death. When this process is damaged, some cells do not end their lives as a normal part of the cell life cycle. These irregular ones grow uncontrollably and divide, forming a mass of abnormal cells. The complex mechanism of cell regulation is tightly controlled by growth hormones.

The best thing about a vegan diet, from a standpoint of cancer risk is that a vegan diet contains no growth hormones. Growth hormones are proteins that promote growth. And cancer is a disease of abnormal growth. So to put growth hormones in your body, when you’re trying to fight cancer or prevent cancer, is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It’s just going to make it worse, because it’s going to promote growth.

And growth hormones are animal products, because all the animals that are slaughtered for us are killed when they’re still fairly young, so they’re still growing. And of course, dairy products are meant to grow a baby calf into a thousand pound cow in a year, so they’re full of growth hormones. And eggs are full of growth hormones. So in order to get these growth hormones out of our diet, we have to go to a plant-based diet, and use plant-based milks and egg-substitutes made from plant foods, and of course, things like veggie burgers and tofu and other plant products in place of meat and other animal products.

Organic meats and grass-fed, non-hormone enhanced meats, still are full of growth hormones, because of the age of the animals. We don’t let them get old before we slaughter them, we eat them when they’re still young. So these growth hormones are in their bodies, whether they’re enhanced, injected with them, or they’re just naturally there. Those growth hormones are in our animal products that we consume. These growth hormones are proteins; they’re not fats. So if you eat low-fat meat and low-fat dairy products, it’s actually worse because they have more protein than they do fats, so they have more growth hormone.

Mr. Eisman learned about how dietary growth hormones cause cancer from the work of Professor Jane Plant, a cancer victim herself whose tumor went into remission shortly after she adopted a vegan diet.

I came across this book in 1999 called “The No Dairy Breast Cancer Prevention Program” by a woman named Jane Plant, who was one of the top scientists in England. And this book opened up my eyes to the link between cancer and dairy products, and as well as all other animal products. So dairy products are the one food that people think is healthy for them, and it really isn’t. It’s just as unhealthy as meat and chicken and eggs, because it has these growth hormones that encourage abnormal growth.

And that’s why she features this. And that’s inspired me as a dietitian, because we dietitians are also brainwashed into thinking that dairy products are necessary foods. And they’re not only not necessary, but they are not even healthful. And they actually shorten our lives by raising our risk of this deadly disease of cancer.

Let me tell you the story of Jane Plant herself. Jane Plant was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987. And after five operations, which she lost all of one breast and part of the other breast, she was told she had at most six months to live. Her breast cancer had spread to her neck. She traveled around the world to countries where breast cancer was not a common disease, and compared it to countries where breast cancer was a common disease.

And she said this pattern was very clear to her that the more dairy products, and actually other animal products as well in a diet, the higher the country’s rate of breast cancer. And so she gave up eating all animal products. And within a few weeks, the tumor on her neck started to itch, and it started to shrink. And when she went back to her doctor six months later, instead of being dead, she was cancer-free. And 15 years later she’s still writing books.

Why is it that not enough nutritionists and medical doctors know about this?

Well, first of all medical doctors are doctors of medicine. They’re not doctors of health, they’re not doctors of nutrition, they’re not doctors of food. They are doctors of medicine. My brother is a medical doctor, and he says, “We never learn anything about food. I learn about what each vitamin might do in your body, but I don’t learn about what foods they’re in. If someone, wants to get that vitamin, I prescribe a pill.”

And if you think about it, if people are healthy from what they eat, there’s not a lot of sickness and there is not a lot of business for the hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not the doctors themselves, but the doctors are pushed by the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry to treat disease and not to prevent disease.

Dietitians are not trained to prescribe diets. They’re trained to teach people how to follow diets that are prescribed by doctors. But the ideal diet is not something that is really pushed, because it’s not economically beneficial for anybody except the individual.

With much of the medical community not informed as to the innumerable benefits of a plant-based diet, it is no wonder the misconception exists that this diet lacks sufficient protein. However nothing could be further from the truth.

Most people think you need to have a lot of protein in your diet, and you really don’t need to have very much. Just a couple of ounces of a day is all you need. And it’s easily gotten from plant foods. And you don’t have to even eat things like soybeans, which are very high in protein. You can eat other beans, things like kidney beans, garbanzo beans, black beans, but also vegetables and grains and nuts and seeds. They all have adequate amounts of protein to meet our needs.

In the US, one can purchase a hamburger at a fast-food outlet for 99 cents. A study by the Center for Science and Environment estimated that the true cost of a hamburger in the US, including government subsidies to the livestock industry, the harm to public health from consuming beef and environmental damage caused by producing it is US$200.

What we really should stop doing is stop subsidizing the meat and dairy industry. We have these farm bills that pass every year, and meat and dairy get most of the money, that’s our tax money subsidizing those foods. They’re the unhealthiest foods. And those are the foods that should be the most expensive. Instead they’re the cheapest because of the subsidies.

Every farm animal is bred intentionally so if we stop consuming them, we can stop breeding them tomorrow and there won’t be millions of them to be producing all these pollutants that are destroying the atmosphere and polluting the water, as well as creating all this unhealthy food. We can stop the breeding of farm animals tomorrow.

On top of all the wonderful things that a vegan lifestyle brings to us in terms of health and well-being, it has many other beneficial effects as well.

But if we really care about our health and the health of the environment and the health of other people, and the health of the animals that we’re trying to spare unnecessary suffering, then a whole foods plant-based diet is a win-win-win situation for everybody concerned. We don’t get hurt, the animals don’t get hurt, the beautiful dog on your lap, and the cows, and the pigs, and the chickens, and the sheep, they have the same feelings that that dog does. And if somebody were to snatch that dog off your lap and try to eat it, people would be so upset. And yet we do that everyday with these other animals who have the same feeling of wanting to survive, of wanting to not be harmed.

Our sincere gratitude, George Eisman, for providing such essential information about the plant strong diet that ensures cancer-free, fulfilling lives. May you always enjoy utmost success on your noble path.

For more information on the Coalition for Cancer Prevention Through Plant-Based Eating, please visit http://www.CoalitionForCancerPrevention.org
Mr. Eisman’s books, “The Most Noble Diet” and “A Basic Course in Vegetarian and Vegan Nutrition,” are available at the same website and http://www.Amazon.com

Trade Your Milk and Butter for Plant-Based Versions

   by Kathy Freston
Bestselling Author, “Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World”

 

 

Today we’re going to switch up milk and butter for their nondairy counterparts. And I’m going to point you to the yummiest ones.

Why this switch? Well, for starters, a lot of milk has added hormones in it — and these additives are no good for our waistlines. In fact, they’re not good for the cows that produce the milk, let alone the humans who drink it! These hormones are injected into cows to make them produce more milk (which creates more profit). But even organic, grass-fed, and chemical-free milk is full of naturally-occurring cow hormones that aren’t necessarily good for people, whether the milk is whole, 2 percent, or skim.

Think of how milk happens: It’s created by a lactating cow in order to feed her little calf so it will get really big, really quickly. By nature’s brilliant design, this milk contains naturally-occurring growth hormones in order to make a little one grow.

But we don’t want to be fat, docile, and slow like cows. No sir. We want to be slim and quick on our feet. By the time we are in kindergarten, we’re not drinking our mama’s milk to make us bigger anymore, and we definitely don’t need it from a cow, whose milk is designed to put a hefty 1,000 pounds on her baby!

Cow’s milk is the perfect nutrition for building a calf into a cow, but definitely not for a human — especially a human who would like to be slim. And to go even further, casein — the main protein in milk — is serious trouble for the human body. Casein is good for a nursing calf, because it helps her grow fast, and it’s designed by nature to keep her bonded to mama. But when humans take in casein from the cow… oh, not good.

The casein in dairy is downright addictive. During the process of dairy digestion, the casein breaks apart into a host of opioids called casomorphins. Note the “morphin(e)” in there? Well, sure enough, when you ingest dairy, you get sort of addicted, as you might to morphine. Why so? Because nature designed cow’s milk to have a drug-like effect on the calf’s brain, to ensure that the little one stays bonded to the mom. It’s nature’s way of making sure the little one continues to get all the nutrients he or she needs. And by the way, just as opiates tend to be constipating, so can dairy products constipate you (especially cheese). So just know it’s not for nothing that people say they are addicted to dairy — there’s a reason! But that’s why we are switching you to something better in such a way that you’ll hardly miss a beat.

Let’s get back to the nutritional issues. Might I mention that most of the fat in milk is saturated butterfat, which clogs your arteries and is bad for your heart? And according to T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University and author of the groundbreaking book The China Study, that casein we were just talking about actually promotes cancer. In fact, he says casein is one of the most significant cancer promoters ever discovered. In layperson’s terms: Milk protein can fertilize cancer cells. (You can read more on this in my bookVeganist.)

Trade your milk for nondairy versions and your stomach is likely to settle down real quickly. Not only that, the pounds will drop, too.

Putting the problem of casein aside for a moment, let’s talk about skim milk.

In a fascinating twist on expectation, a 2011 Harvard study of 12,829 children showed that skim milk may make you fatter than whole milk. That wouldn’t surprise farmers; when they want to fatten up a pig, they feed it skim milk.

The reason? Milk sugar.

When you remove the fat from milk, what’s left is lactose — milk sugar. The end product is an unbalanced, sugary-like drink that leads to weight gain.

So skip the nonfat and low-fat stuff and go for a yummy nondairy milk instead — preferably one that is unsweetened (although there are some nondairy milks that are sweetened with stevia; more on stevia in a couple of days).

I prefer the unsweetened nondairy milks so I can sweeten them, if I need to, to my own taste. Usually all it takes is a smidge of agave or stevia, but it’s always better to see how much sugary stuff you’re using and try to cool it wherever possible.

These days there are so many wonderful milk alternatives. You can find soy, almond, rice, hemp, or coconut milk just about anywhere, even at your favorite coffee place.

You’ll feel extra good about making this switch when I tell you that the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services just released their Dietary Guidelines for Americans in January 2011, in which they provide advice on how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases. The guidelines emphasize a plant-based diet! Most people think that plant-based foods are just fruits and vegetables, but they include whole grains, nuts, legumes, and soy foods like soy milk, almond milk, and coconut milk.

Plant-based foods are associated with lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes because they tend to be high in nutrients and low in calories and saturated fat. Research has also shown that plant-based foods can help reduce the risk of chronic disease. For example, most plant-based foods are much lower in saturated fat than animal foods, making them a better choice for maintaining heart health. Also, since plant-based foods contain no cholesterol, using them to replace animal foods can be an effective way to lower overall cholesterol intake.

One “nutrient of concern” noted by the new Dietary Guidelines is calcium. Since consumers do not get enough of this vital nutrient, many makers of soy, almond, and coconut milks have recently increased the calcium level in their products to equal that of conventional dairy milk, or they even surpass it by 50 percent! Fifty percent more calcium than milk — well, you can’t beat that!

Butter

Now to everyone’s favorite fat: butter. Butter makes everything taste better. Okay, agreed. But butter is nearly all fat — much of it saturated fat — and it’s calorie-dense. One tablespoon of butter has 102 calories. Compare that to hummus, which has only 25 calories for the same tablespoon. If you’re looking for a spread for your toast or cracker, try using hummus or some other bean spread. You can even smear a little avocado where you would have used butter. If you are sautéing something, try using a little spray olive oil, and when I say a little, I mean like a super-quick spritz.

And if you consider the taste of butter an absolute must-have every once in a while, try Earth Balance buttery spread. It’s delicious and substitutes perfectly anywhere you’d use butter.

If you’ve heard nasty things about margarine — and they’re likely true — don’t worry: Earth Balance is not margarine.

source>www.huffingtonpost.com