How Health and Happiness Come to Those Who Seek the Truth
This is a synopsis of what the Stop Feeding Us Lies book contains.
Chapter 1. Stop asking the wrong question
The National Health Service costs the UK £390 million per day. It is severely overstretched and always in need of more money. Everyone is asking ‘how much money does it need’, ‘how should it be organised’ and ‘how should it be staffed’? These are the wrong questions. We should be asking ‘Why are so many people ill?’ The answer is simple: we are eating the wrong type of food. Our NHS approved dietary guidelines are wrong and they are causing obesity, diabetes and many of our modern diseases.
Chapter 2. Misinformation, dogma and guidelines
We are bombarded with advice on what to eat and not to eat. Many people are confused. Nutritional studies use epidemiology or observation, the weakest type of science, which can only show a correlation but not a cause. Most of the dogmatic beliefs in nutrition are based on weak science. The obesity crisis began in the early 1980s. It is not a coincidence that the USA produced its National Dietary Guidelines in 1977 and Britain copied them in 1983. These guidelines are still official policy. The story of how the guidelines came to recommend this diet is an extraordinary tale of arrogance, bad science and politics. Good science was ignored and bad science was used to unleash an untried dietary experiment upon the whole world with disastrous consequences.
Chapter 3. Evolution and why it matters.
To understand how our bodies and brains work best, we need to know how we evolved. Our evolution made us exactly what we are today. We cannot ignore it and hope to thrive. Seven million years ago, our ancestors lived in trees but climate change gradually turned the forests into grasslands and we had to adapt. We cannot eat grass but learnt to eat the animals that do. We became the dominant species on the planet because we have the best brain, which we developed while our ancestors spent a million years running after animals and eating them.
Chapter 4. How to lose weight without feeling hungry.
Our bodies do not contain a calorie counting device. Organisations like Public Health England insist we need to reduce our calorie intake to lose weight. That approach does not work because our weight is controlled by hormones and metabolism. It is the type of food we eat, not the quantity, that affect our hormones and therefore our weight. Research published in the Lancet in 1956 proved this to be true. Why don’t the ‘experts’ know this? ‘Eat less and move more’ is appalling advice. It blames the victim by implying the obese are greedy and lazy.
Chapter 5. Fat and cholesterol do not cause heart disease.
Saturated fat has been portrayed as the Grim Reaper’s best friend. To eat a healthy diet, we need to lose our fear of fat. The idea that saturated fat and cholesterol clog our arteries is one of the biggest lies we have ever been told. It is a lie that has made the Pharmaceutical Industry billions of pounds of profit. There is no such thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol. This was invented by drug companies to make you afraid of cholesterol so you would take their statin drugs. Heart disease is a process with many potential components, none of which are cholesterol. Cholesterol is vital for human life. Our cells and liver make it in case we don’t eat enough of it. Our sex hormones are made from cholesterol, as is vitamin D in our skin. Our brains contain the highest concentration of cholesterol in the body.
Chapter 6. Pure, white and deadly.
The advice to eat low fat food has been a disaster. Healthy fats were removed and replaced with sugar. Too much sugar eventually leads to insulin resistance which leads to obesity, diabetes, and certain cancers. Diabetes leads to kidney failure, blindness, amputations and early death. Insulin resistance and excess sugar are implicated in high blood pressure, heart disease, infertility, acne, Alzheimer’s disease and so much more.
Chapter 7. Pure, white and healthy.
We are always told to reduce sugar, fat and salt. They are invariably put together as if they are a triumvirate of evil. Getting one out of three correct is not good enough for official advice. Sugar is bad but salt and fat are vital nutrients. The case against salt has no good science behind it. Evidence shows that the recommended intake of salt is well below the optimum and could be leading to a lot of health problems.
Chapter 8. A dietary guide of misinformation.
People think vegetables are healthy and therefore vegetable oils will be too. You cannot get oil out of a vegetable. They are industrially processed oils from seeds. Mankind never ate them until the process was invented in 1911. They are promoted as healthy because they contain little saturated fat and a lot of polyunsaturated fat. They were recommended because of the incorrect fear that saturated fat causes heart disease, without ever being tested. They are unstable, rancid chemicals that wreak havoc on our health, increase systemic inflammation and are an increasing cause of cancers.
Chapter 9. Religion, corruption, censorship.
John Harvey Kellogg was a doctor and religious zealot who believed sexual passion was a sin and it was aroused by eating rich foods. He invented a breakfast cereal of flaked corn because it was completely bland and low in nutrition in the hope it would stop people masturbating. He was a leading member of the puritanical Seventh Day Adventist church which makes millions selling processed food. Companies like Coca Cola pay fortunes to compliant researchers to mislead the public. Drug companies use ‘relative risk’ calculations instead of ‘absolute risk’ to imply they have a miracle cure. Doctors who speak out against this are censored by the authorities.
Chapter 10. Veganism and health
There has been a distinct increase in veganism and vegan books. An entirely plant-based diet is promoted as healthy but it is not. It is impossible to obtain all our essential nutrients without animal sourced foods. We evolved because we ate meat. Long term vegans are more likely to suffer deficiency diseases, mental disturbances and have children with severe birth defects. Strict vegan parents have been convicted in court of causing the death of their children because of malnutrition.
Chapter 11. Veganism and the environment
The vegan community is right to object to the worst examples of factory farming. The idea that farm livestock increase global warming because of their methane emissions is entirely false because of the ecology of soil. Ruminant animals have been a vital part of the world’s biosphere for millions of years and their natural grazing is essential for soil fertility and carbon sequestration. To blame cow burps for the climate change caused by the coal, oil and gas industries is absurd.
Chapter 12. Exercise is vital
Regular exercise has a long list of physical and mental health benefits. Some people enjoy sport and others do not. Finding a type of exercise you enjoy doing is the important thing. It can be anything from competitive sport to walking, gardening, or dancing. However, the idea that exercise is the best way to lose weight is wrong. Exercise improves muscle mass, strength, balance, bone density and fitness. It relieves stress and increases cognitive ability.
Chapter 13. Sunshine and sleep.
We are told to protect ourselves from the harmful rays of the sun and to apply sunscreen whenever the sun shines on our skin. We should never allow the sun to burn our skin but we evolved under the sun and the sun’s rays bring many health benefits that we should not avoid. Research shows that people who work outdoors suffer far fewer dangerous melanomas than indoor workers. Sunshine on our skin produces vitamin d, endorphins and heart disease reducing nitric oxide. Sleep is vital for health and sunshine helps our circadian rhythms.
Chapter 14. Fit children come first in the classroom.
Education policy is based on learning facts and passing exams. Our brains and our bodies are not separate things and research clearly shows that physically fit children do better academically than unfit children. The Department for Education is sadly lacking in scientific input; the curriculum for PE lessons has no requirement to improve the physical fitness of children.
Chapter 15. Playtime makes us better people
All children have a strong instinct to play. There are many forms of play which are vital to physical, mental and social abilities. In recent years, the opportunity for children to play outdoors has been severely curtailed by fearful parents. Playing indoors on a computer is not how we evolved and does not develop the skills and attitudes that all children need.
Chapter 16. Happiness
This is not about the extremes of euphoria or despair but the baseline level of contentment we feel each day. Physical health, sleep, low levels of stress and a good diet are foundations for happiness but a sense of responsibility and meaning are critical too. We are bombarded with advertising to have things we do not need. ‘Experts’ tell us what to do and how to do it. Our ability to trust our instincts and make our own decisions is constantly being eroded. We need to increase pride in ourselves through making the effort to look after ourselves and our families and friends.
Chapter 17. What to eat.
We should eat real, unprocessed food to be healthy and happy. A list of real foods and some recipe suggestions. It will take 20 to 50 years for the Government to throw away the dietary guidelines. We need to see though all the false information pushed on us by corporate greed and political lobbying. We need to look after ourselves and help each other to achieve optimum health.
Chapter 18. Onwards to better health.
An invitation to keep learning about how to be healthy and how to see through all the lies we are told.