With so many food and nutrition books on the market, what makes yours different?
“In Food Sanity, I use a common science meets common sense approach to figuring out the culinary conundrum. Unfortunately, we can’t solely rely on scientific studies because those can change, sometimes weekly. Plus, many of them are ‘BUYased,’ meaning they are bought and paid for. PLOS medical journal did an interesting study on the correlation between the funding source and the researcher’s conclusion. They analyzed 206 scientific studies and looked at the relationship between the findings and the group conducting the research. The results of this study were staggering! When the group conducting the research had a vested financial interest in the outcome, the results were eight times more favorable than when the group conducting the research was an independent third party.
As the saying goes, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ I wrote Food Sanity to help decipher through all the conflicting information we are being bombarded with and I share how to make our own educated choices. I also tap into our instincts and how to rely on what our gut is telling us. Then I explore the human biology and see if we are designed to eat a specific food. When you combine common science, common sense, and biology, you have a foolproof blueprint that shows you the best way to eat, lose weight, and prevent disease.”
While researching all the food groups, what do you consider to be public enemy #1?
“The worst offender when it comes to food is dairy! We’ve been brainwashed as children into believing that if we want to grow up big and strong we need to drink milk. The fact is, children who drink milk get more chronic ear infections, have more allergies, are more likely to be overweight, and are at greater risk of diabetes. Also, milk is the most common allergy; affecting eight out of ten adults with symptoms they don’t even associate with dairy consumption.
A major reason why cow’s milk is bad for us is the protein it contains called casein. Humans don’t have the enzymes to break down the high amount of casein found in milk. While casein makes up approximately 20 percent of the protein found in human breast milk, cow’s milk contains 80 percent, which is far more than humans are designed to break down. Casein from cow’s milk is also used to make glue to hold together wood and a polymer used to make plastics.
When you ingest casein, a glue-like substance in milk, your body attacks it by producing histamines, which cause mucus production that can lead to bronchitis, allergies, asthma, sinus and ear infections, irritable bowel syndrome, and diarrhea, just to name a few. Numerous studies, including data from the World Health Organization (WHO), have also linked consumption of casein with increased risk of heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes!
Casein is what makes a 100-pound baby calf grow into a 2,000-pound cow. The average human baby weighs less than 8 pounds and grows into a 170-pound adult. You wouldn’t use rocket fuel in the gas tank of your moped. Why would you put gargantuan-size cow fuel inside your human body?
Whenever I suggest that my patients eliminate milk, I always hear the same response, ‘How am I supposed to get calcium for my bones?’ Contrary to all those milk-mustache ads, milk doesn’t build strong bones. In fact, studies show milk may cause osteoporosis (brittle bones,) including unbiased research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Public Health, and the British Medical Journal. The milk you purchase at the grocery store is pasteurized, which means it’s heated to up to 280ºF. While exposing milk to excessive heat does help to kill off harmful bacteria, it also damages the calcium content, making the mineral unusable by the body.