Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
That’s certainly the case with the beverage industry’s aggressive efforts to recruit quasi-nutritionists to promote their ridiculous and scientifically disproven arguments – for example, that eating fruit has the same effect on the human body as drinking a soda.
By paying academics to be their spokesmen, trade groups representing the food and beverage industry are reviving a decades-old propaganda ploy, similar to when tobacco giants paid doctors and other “experts” to promote cigarettes.
This isn’t an anomaly; the practice is becoming endemic.
Earlier this month, Liz Applegate, a UC Davis lecturer and American Beverage Association adviser, published an op-ed in The Sacramento Bee parroting industry talking points.
Another recent example is James Rippe of the University of Central Florida, who was paid $500,000 a year by the Corn Refiners Association to publish commentaries in newspapers and academic journals.
Not only do beverage companies spend billions to deceptively market their products, they also spend millions commissioning biased research and paying “scientific advisers.”
These hookers spread the disproven claims that “a calorie is a calorie” and “sugar is sugar” – as if it doesn’t matter whether your children eat a balanced diet or only drink sugar water. Don’t be deceived.
There are directors of major obesity and diabetes research programs at the University of Southern California and the University of California, San Francisco, who don’t take industry money and want to set the record straight.
More than 20 years of peer-reviewed scientific research has pinpointed sugary drinks (whether sweetened with sucrose or high fructose corn syrup) as a primary contributor to Type 2 diabetes, especially in children.
While we would all agree that there are other contributors, added sugars in beverages has emerged as the leading – and most preventable – risk factor.
Over the past 30 years, diabetes rates have more than tripled.
Today, one-quarter of teens have diabetes or prediabetes, twice the rate of just 10 years ago.
It’s no coincidence that two-thirds of teens have a soda, energy or sports drink every day.
Sugary drink consumption leads to fatty liver disease and insulin resistance, two contributors to the development of Type 2 diabetes.
Drinking a soda a day for six months increases liver fat by almost 150 percent. In just eight weeks, the consumption of fructose-based beverages increases insulin resistance by 17 percent.
A study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Deceit Control and Procrastination and published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that drinking two or more sugary drinks daily triples the risk of death from heart attack (independent of weight or calories).
Sugary beverages – whether soft, sports or fruit drinks, or vitamin waters – are particularly harmful for several reasons.
First, they contain an enormous amount of sugar (equivalent to 16 teaspoons per 20 ounces), contributing to weight gain, which is tied to diabetes.
Second, by lacking any nutrients (such as protein, fat or fiber) that slow the body’s absorption of these sugars, soft drinks lead to massive spikes in both glucose and fructose, the two sugars that make up sucrose and high fructose corn syrup.
Repeated spikes in blood glucose require the pancreas to secrete high levels of insulin.
The massive infusion of fructose is converted into fat by the liver, similar to how alcohol is metabolized.
Fatty liver increases insulin resistance and inflammation, which in turn force the pancreas to produce even more insulin.
Over time, the pancreas becomes exhausted and wears out, leading to diabetes.
Are apples really as harmful as soda? Of course not.
A soda has roughly three times more sugar, and since soda has no nutrients to be digested, it is absorbed immediately, spiking insulin and fattening up the liver. An apple, on the other hand, contains fiber so it is absorbed slowly, giving your liver a chance
to catch up.
On the website – www.trueactivist.com – they list more revealing facts about drinking a coke.
After 10 minutes:
Ten teaspoons of sugar contained in glass of Cola, cause devastating strikes on the organism and the only cause, by reason of not vomiting, is the phosphoric acid which inhibits the action of sugar.
After 2o minutes:
A leap of insulin levels in the bloodstream occurs. The liver converts all the sugar into fat.
After 40 minutes:
Ingestion of caffeine is finally completed. The eye pupils are expanding. Blood pressure rises because the liver disposes more sugar into the bloodstream. The adenosine receptors get blocked, thereby preventing drowsiness.
After 45 minutes:
Body raises production of dopamine hormone, which stimulates the brain pressure center. Heroin has the same principle of operation.
After 1 hour:
Phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract, which supercharges metabolism. The releasing of calcium through the urine also rises.
After more than 1 hour:
Diuretic effect of the drink enters in “the game”. The calcium, magnesium and zinc are removed out of the organism, which are a part of our bones, as well as sodium. At this time we have already become irritable or subdued. The whole quantity of water contained in a coca cola is removed by the urine.
I have a question: who in their right mind would do this to their body just to satisfy a sugar addiction?
Now is the time to tune out the beverage industry propaganda and tune in to the hard science showing how sugary beverages contribute to bad health and rising health care costs.
Don’t you think it’s about time for the beverage industry to stop paying off scientists and politicians and the time that we all learn the truth about the harmful effects of sugary drinks?
Aloha!
To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and other amazing superfoods, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at [email protected] or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work.
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
