John Robbins 2013-05-22T22:38:36-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=john-robbins Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for John Robbins Good old fashioned elbow grease. Which 'Natural' Food Companies Are Fighting the Effort to Label GMOs? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1821633 2012-08-22T13:30:59-04:00 2012-10-22T05:12:07-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ On Nov. 6, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on historic Proposition 37, which would mandate the labeling of genetically-engineered foods. At a time when it's hard to get a large percentage of Americans to agree on almost anything, polls show that as many as 90 percent of us want genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) labeled. More than 40 other nations, including the entire European Union, already require disclosure. But Monsanto and its allies are dedicated to keeping consumers in the dark and are pouring tens of millions of dollars into a disinformation campaign intended to defeat Prop 37.



You might expect the biotech industry to try to block a measure that would require foods that contain GMOs to say so on their packages. After all, a growing body of scientific research is indicating that GMOs might be far more dangerous than was previously imagined. But Monsanto's allies in the effort to defeat Prop 37 include some unexpected culprits. It can be shocking to realize that some of the most trusted names in the natural food world are in bed with Monsanto.



Naked Juice is owned by PepsiCo, which has donated $1.7 million to Monsanto's efforts. Honest Tea, Odwalla and Simply Orange are owned by Coca-Cola, which has donated another million dollars. Alexia and Lightlife are owned by ConAgra, which has put in more than $1 million.



You won't find this mentioned anywhere on the Kashi product packaging, but Kashi, as well as Gardenburger and Morningstar Farms, is owned by Kellogg, which has already coughed up more than $600,000 to defeat Prop 37.



Kashi has already been in plenty of trouble on the GMO front this year. A few months ago, a number of natural foods stores stopped carrying Kashi cereals when it came to their attention that the "soy used in most Kashi products is genetically modified, and that when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors."



In an attempt to defend itself, Kashi released a YouTube video that announced that:



"While it's likely that some of our foods contain GMOs, the main reason for that is because in North America, well over 80 percent of many crops, including soybeans are grown using GMOs ... Factors outside our control such as pollen drift from nearby crops ... have led to an environment where GMOs are not sufficiently controlled."


This seemingly reasonable defense -- that the only reason GMOs are found in Kashi products is because GMOs are widespread in the environment -- might be valid if the problem was only trace GMOs, which lead to a product being less than 1 percent genetically engineered. But when the Cornucopia Institute tested Kashi's Go Lean cereal, which gets its protein from soy, they found that the soy was 100 percent genetically engineered.



There are other natural foods heroes whose profits are being used to try to keep us in the dark. Silk soy milk carries the "Non-GMO Project Verified" seal on its package. But Silk is owned by Dean Foods, which has donated more than a quarter million dollars to Monsanto's efforts to defeat Prop 37.



The list of sell-outs who masquerade as bastions of organics is disappointingly long. R. W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organics are owned by Smucker, which has donated $388,000 to killing Prop 37. Cascadian Farm, Larabar and Muir Glen are owned by General Mills, which has put more than half a million dollars into the effort.



The good news is that even with large agribusiness companies purchasing natural and organic brands and then betraying consumers by funding the attack on GMO labeling, Prop 37 still stands an excellent chance of passing.



And not everyone has sold out, not by a long shot. There are still some authentic heroes in the natural food industry. Nature's Path, Dr. Bronner's, Nutiva and Lundberg Rice stand out among the companies that are contributing to the effort to pass Prop 37 and ensure your right to know what's in your food. Organic Valley, Amy's and Eden Foods are also standing up for your right to know. And the owner of a natural health website, Joseph Mercola (mercola.com), has donated nearly a million dollars to the good fight.



If you want to know more, the Cornucopia Institute has released a shopper's guide to the companies that are donating on both sides of Prop 37.



At present, it's not easy to know whether there are GMOs in your food. The Non-GMO Shopping Guide put out by the Institute for Responsible Technology is a great support. But the most important thing you can do is to help pass Proposition 37.



If Californians pass Prop 37 in November, it will have enormous implications to the food system throughout North America.



Ignorance, in some cases, may be bliss. But in the case of GMOs, the ignorance of not knowing what is in your food is not bliss, it's subservience to Monsanto and its allies. And it could mean a lifetime of devastating health problems for you and your children.



It's going to be a battle. Let's win this one for ourselves, for the earth, and for all future generations.



John Robbins is cofounder of the Food Revolution Network, which provides information and inspiration to help you heal your body, and you world... with food. He is author of many bestsellers including The Food Revolution; No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution; and Diet For A New America. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit JohnRobbins.info.

]]> Could Anyone Find This Animal Abuse Tolerable? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1821942 2012-08-22T13:09:42-04:00 2012-10-22T05:12:07-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ Yesterday, the USDA shut down operations at Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, Calif. The facility, located at the center of California's dairy industry, slaughters California dairy cows when their milk production declines and sells their meat to make hamburger for the school lunch program. Federal regulators took the action after receiving undercover footage taken at the slaughterhouse by an animal welfare group, Compassion Over Killing.



Central Valley Meat Co. is owned by Brian and Lawrence Coelho. Asked for a comment, Brian Coelho said: "Our company seeks not just to meet federal humane handling regulations, but exceed them."



Meanwhile, the California Milk Advisory Board tells us that "Happy Cows Come From California." In fact, the agency has just this past week once more cranked up the ad campaign with a new twist. Titled "Friends," the new ads use a happy and talkative cow to convey the unmistakable feeling that by eating California cheese and drinking California milk, you are expanding your family to include friendly cows. The tag line is "Make us part of your family."



Factory farm dairies have long employed the PR tactic of telling consumers that they treat their animals "just like members of their own families." Considering the footage provided by Compassion Over Killing, I hope that isn't true. It shows dairy cows bleeding and thrashing painfully after being repeatedly shot in the head with a pneumatic gun in bungled efforts to render them unconscious prior to killing them. One cow is shown still conscious and flailing as a conveyor lifts her by a single leg for transport to the area where her throat will be slit.



If you've eaten at In-N-Out Burger recently, you may have eaten a burger made from the flesh of a cow killed at Central Valley Meat Co. The burger chain has regularly obtained meat from this slaughterhouse but severed ties with the company yesterday after learning of the current situation. After seeing the footage, USDA officials began investigating whether beef from sick cows has reached the food supply and should be recalled. The practice of sending meat to market from sick animals is illegal.



How often are dairy cows treated this badly in today's slaughterhouses? It's anybody's guess. The industry has gotten legislation passed that makes it illegal to take undercover footage of cruelty to farmed animals, so undercover investigators risk years in prison to do so.



The industry considers people who take footage like this to be criminals and wants them jailed. I consider them heroes who are trying to return our society to a semblance of morality in the way we treat dairy cows and other livestock. Either way, I find it difficult to imagine anyone who could watch this footage and find it tolerable.



Here is the footage. Please be prepared if you watch it. It's grotesque. I don't think anyone with a heart could possibly find this tolerable.



WARNING: Video contains graphic content.



John Robbins is author of ten best-sellers, including No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution. The recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award, John Robbins is cofounder of the Food Revolution Network, which provides information and inspiration to help you heal your body, and you world... with food. To learn more about his work, visit JohnRobbins.info.

]]> Will the Farm Bill Nullify Laws Against Animal Cruelty? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1692264 2012-07-21T18:50:40-04:00 2012-09-20T05:12:04-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ amendment to the farm bill that would not only jeopardize those laws, but also any laws passed by any other state that might seek to restrict factory farm cruelty.

The current Farm Bill expires at the end of September, so Congress has to cobble together a new one in a hurry. King's amendment was introduced near midnight at the very end of a marathon session. It was debated for a grand total of 20 minutes, and then passed by the House Committee on Agriculture.

If the Senate follows suit, it will become law.

Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) President Wayne Pacelle says the measure could nullify "any laws to protect animals, and perhaps... laws to protect the environment, workers, or public safety." The amendment is worded so broadly, he notes, that it could even prevent states from enacting laws that would prevent the sale of food produced by forced labor.

But Congressman King is proud of his amendment because, he says, it "will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States... are prohibited from establishing... restrictive state laws." King doesn't want anyone, particularly anyone associated with animal welfare causes, telling America's farmers how to raise and care for their animals. "My [amendment] language wipes out everything they've done [to ban the most cruel practices] with pork and veal."

King is particularly peeved with California. In 2008, California voters passed a ballot measure requiring that by 2015, no eggs can be sold in the state that come from hens housed in cages so small they can't begin to lift a single wing. The act was a repudiation of the livestock industry's practice of keeping animals in conditions that violate their natures and frustrate almost all of their natural instincts. And this month a state law banning foie gras took effect. "Foie gras" literally means "fatty liver." To produce it, workers ram pipes down male ducks' or geese's throats several times a day, pumping otherwise impossible amounts of fat into the animals' stomachs. Their livers bloat to up to 10 times their normal size, and are then sold as an expensive delicacy.

King doesn't like these kinds of bans. His amendment, called the "Protect Interstate Commerce Act," says that states that object to the way a food product is produced in other states cannot ban the sale of that product.

Paradoxically, King is normally an outspoken proponent of states' rights, so much so that he has expressed strong support for states' rights to ban contraception. Reporter and blogger Zack Beauchamp points out the irony. Congressman King would permit states to ban birth control, but not foie gras.

Perhaps the contradiction can be explained by the fact that King's current bid for re-election depends on the financial backing of agribusiness interests in his state, and these interests are vehemently opposed to California's laws. Bowing to the dictates of industrial agriculture and factory farms, King's home state of Iowa has virtually no restrictions on the conditions that can be imposed on egg-laying hens or other farm animals. This is one of the reasons the state has been responsible for some of the worst outbreaks of salmonella poisoning in U.S. history.

Congressman King's views are often extreme. Last year, he said that providing free birth control to women could make us a "dying civilization." And just in the last few months: He has made headlines by saying there would be no discrimination against gays in the workplace if gays would simply keep their sexual orientation secret. He has compared detention for immigrants to holiday resorts. And he has equated janitors in House office buildings to the East German secret police for installing energy-efficient light-bulbs.

But King's amendment to the Farm Bill isn't just outrageous talk. It's designed not only to block California's animal safety laws, but also to prevent any state from imposing its own animal welfare standards on producers from other states. And it's now part of the Farm Bill that has been approved by the House.

Another Republican Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, once said "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it." But Steve King takes a different approach.

Neither King nor Lincoln ever graduated from college. But that's about as far as the likeness goes. For unlike Steve King, Abraham Lincoln understood that how we treat animals says something about the kind of human beings we are.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including The Food Revolution, No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution and Diet For A New America. He and his son, Ocean Robbins, are co-hosts of the 32,000 member Food Revolution Network. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit JohnRobbins.info]]> Why Are Twinkies Cheaper Than Carrots? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1553955 2012-06-01T08:26:04-04:00 2012-08-01T05:12:19-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
If you want to eat healthfully, you have to fight an uphill battle. Why are government subsidies pushing in the wrong direction?

Who would it hurt if we enacted policies that actually encouraged the foods that are healthiest for people and for our world? Who opposes the efforts to make it easier, rather than harder, for people to make healthy food choices?

Government Policy Consistently Favors Big Agribusiness

As I describe in my new book No Happy Cows, agrichemical companies, factory farms and junk food manufacturers are quite happy with things the way they are. Thanks to their lobbying clout, government policies consistently favor the financial interests of these special interests over public health, even though the result is trillions of dollars in additional health care expenses.

Here's an example: In just the last two years, 24 states have considered legislation that would place a tax on soft drinks. These "soda taxes" would discourage consumption of drinks high in sugar, thus reducing obesity and health care costs. And they would also raise money that could be used to subsidize healthier foods. But in every single state, the legislation has been defeated. PepsiCo Inc., the Coca-Cola Company, and the American Beverage Association have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to determine the outcome.

"In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity," a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. "The side with the fattest wallets."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, perhaps the best-financed lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year -- roughly what those opposing stricter guidelines on sugary sodas in the U.S. spent every 13 hours.

Spending $1 Trillion on the Wrong Things

Next week, the U.S. Senate will begin floor debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, which lays the groundwork for nearly $1 trillion in U.S. government spending over the next decade. Most of that spending goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP -- still sometimes referred to as food stamps), and to subsidies and incentives for farmers.

Efforts to restrict SNAP spending to healthier foods have been fought bitterly, and successfully, by the junk food lobbies.

Meanwhile, the current Senate proposal would give tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Agribusiness, but would give next to nothing to programs benefiting the environment, organic food, nutrition, or small farmers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the proposal an "all-you-can-eat-buffet for the subsidy lobby."

In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. But that's not what's on the table in this year's "agri-business as usual" farm bill.

Kari Hamerschlag, Senior Food and Agriculture Analyst for the Environmental Working Group, explains that the current proposal would actually "slash programs for conservation, nutrition, rural development and beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers."

For example, funding for research in organic farming would be cut to almost nothing, while corn growers, who have received $73.8 billion in subsidies in the last 15 years, would get even more now. Subsidized GMO corn is used to produce cheap high-fructose corn syrup, a substance that even Vice President Joe Biden says is more likely to kill an American than terrorism.

This heavily subsidized genetically modified corn is also fed to livestock in factory farms and feedlots -- at unfairly reduced prices.

"Factory farms pose a serious public health hazard, so why are they subsidized by public money?" asks Food Revolution Summit speaker Dr. Neal Barnard. "These facilities pump out high-fat, high-cholesterol meat products and often pollute waterways -- yet they also receive generous subsidies under the Farm Bill. We want Congress to stop rewarding facilities that endanger public health."

These subsidies aren't just costing U.S. taxpayers and enriching big agribusiness. They are also having a devastating impact on the health of tens of millions of people.

With all that we now know about nutrition, what kind of sense do these government policies make?

2012-05-29-JRchart.png

Chart courtesy of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine



The USDA's Dietary Guidelines say eating more healthful plant-based foods and less saturated fat and cholesterol helps prevent heart problems and other life-threatening medical conditions.

But 63 percent of the government's agricultural subsidies for domestic food products in recent history have supported meat and dairy production -- the very foods highest in saturated fat and cholesterol. Less than 1 percent of these subsidies have gone to fruits and vegetables.

Food Revolution, Anyone?

The good news is that people are waking up, and you can join in the movement! Increasing numbers of people across partisan lines are calling for government policy to stop supporting the loudest lobbyists, and to start supporting the health of the population. And with the Farm Bill coming up for vote soon, this is a great time to get involved.

  1. Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your senators' and/or representative's office. Tell them the Farm Bill should invest in food that is healthy for people and the earth. Tell them that instead of cutting support for nutrition, conservation and anti-hunger programs, they should cut crop insurance programs that only benefit the largest and wealthiest agribusiness operations.


  2. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is one of many organizations doing brilliant work on this issue in the U.S. Find out more and sign up to take action here.


  3. Educate yourself by reading books like No Happy Cows. You'll learn how to protect yourself in an age of predatory marketing. And your body will thank you for the rest of your life.


John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution and Diet For A New America. He and his son, Ocean Robbins, are co-hosts of the 32,000 member Food Revolution Network. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit http://www.johnrobbins.info.

For more by John Robbins, click here.

For more healthy living health news, click here.]]> Pink Slime and Mad Cow Disease: Coming to a Burger Near You tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1455656 2012-04-26T14:41:46-04:00 2012-06-26T05:12:01-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ recently purchased seven million pounds of something delectably called "pink slime."

Soon thereafter, news reports trumpeted that pink slime hasn't just been making its way into school lunches, as bad as that sounds. In recent years, nearly a billion pounds of this ammonia-laced burger filler have been mixed annually into the ground beef sold in the U.S. As a result, more than two-thirds of the nation's pre-made burger patties have contained pink slime.

The name "pink slime" sounds, well, slimy, but what exactly is it? The answer isn't reassuring. In fact, it's as gross as it seems. Just 10 years ago, according to Mary Jane's Farm, "the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings' that were sold primarily as pet food." But then Beef Products, Inc. began converting the stuff into a mash and treating it with ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria. The resulting product was given the name pink slime by Gerald Zirnstein, a microbiologist working for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. He said it was "not meat," but "salvage." Zirnstein added: "I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling."

Does such fraudulent labeling still take place? In March, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer reported that 70 percent of U.S. supermarket ground beef contained pink slime, and that it is often labeled "100% ground beef."

After the ABC special generated a great deal of negative attention to pink slime, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack held a press conference in an effort to defend the product. His justification for including it in the school lunch program? He said it is safe, cheap and helps to fight childhood obesity. The main problem, he said, is the unfortunate name "pink slime." That night, Jon Stewart offered his help. He suggested that, instead, consumers adopt the term "ammonia-soaked centrifuge-separated byproduct paste."

The beef industry shot back, saying the proper term is "lean finely textured beef" and suggesting it simply be called "LFTB." The following night, Stephen Colbert agreed. "Yes, LFTB," he said, "because our beef now has so many hormones, it's a member of the transgender community."

And now, as if the burger business needed any more bad press, a case of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) has been discovered in a California dairy cow. In the U.S., virtually all dairy cows are eventually ground up into burgers.

Mad cow disease, or BSE, you may remember, is the infection that decimated English cattle herds in the 1980s and 1990s, and caused hundreds of deaths in humans from a gruesome and lethal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). When a former cattle rancher, Howard Lyman, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, explaining that the very same livestock-feeding practices that had caused the problem in England were in place in the U.S., Oprah famously remarked, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger."

The beef industry doesn't like anyone causing their market to shrink, so they sued Oprah for $20 million, telling her they would drop the case if she'd eat a hamburger on her show. She refused, and they brought the case in Amarillo, Texas, distributing bumper stickers throughout the town stating "the only mad cow in Amarillo is Oprah." It was a bitterly contested case, and the cattlemen spent many millions on attorney fees, but to no avail. After Oprah won, she appeared on the court room steps and fiercely proclaimed: "The First Amendment not only lives, it rocks. And I'm still never going to eat another hamburger."

Soon thereafter, the U.S. cattle industry ceased the feeding practices that Lyman had said could lead to a major pandemic of the disease in the U.S. And as far as the beef industry was concerned, the matter was settled. That is, until now.

The appearance this week of a case of mad cow disease in the U.S. herd has made a lot of people very nervous. Two major South Korean retailers immediately pulled U.S. beef from their stores, and Indonesia has banned all imports of U.S. beef. Faced with yet another blow to their image and their revenues, the U.S. meat industry is frantic to reassure the public.

Meat industry officials are pointing to the rarity of BSE in the U.S. as evidence that U.S. burgers are safe to eat. An American Meat Institute executive vice-president, James Hodges, is repeatedly reminding the media, government officials, and the public that only four American animals, including this new case, have been diagnosed with the disease in the last 10 years. "That translates into one of the lowest rates of BSE in any nation that has ever diagnosed a case," he says proudly.

But there's a problem. Could this be a case of "Don't look, don't find"? Nearly 34 million cattle are slaughtered every year in the U.S. Of those, only 40,000 are tested for BSE. That's about one in every thousand animals. If we tested 80,000, would we find two? If we tested them all, would we find 1,000 cases a year? One cow can make its way into many thousands of burgers. So then, how many burgers might be contaminated?

No one knows. And it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the U.S. meat industry would like to keep it that way. The disease in humans is invariably fatal, but it takes years to show up, and can appear to be an early-onset and rapidly developing dementia. As a result, it is very difficult to track.

A key to solving the case at hand is finding where and when the cow was born. But tracking how this dairy cow came to be infected with BSE is not a simple matter, because the U.S. is one of the only beef-producing countries in the world that does not have a mandatory identification system that tracks animals from birth through slaughterhouse. Even Botswana tracks its cattle with microchips. In New Zealand, bar codes on meat packages enable consumers to learn just about anything they want to know about the history of the animal whose flesh they might consume.

There have of course been many attempts in the U.S. to create a national identification system for cattle. But they have all been stymied by resistance from segments of the cattle industry.

This recent case of mad cow disease could be an isolated case. It could amount to nothing more than a fleeting news item. That, certainly, is what the U.S. meat industry would like officials to think, and what it would like consumers to believe.

On the other hand, mad cow disease is no joke. It killed hundreds of people in England who ate burgers they had no way of knowing might be tainted.

And here's another point. Even if a burger isn't carrying mad cow disease, and even if it isn't filled with ammonia-laced pink slime, should we be eating it? Last month one of the largest studies in medical history was reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. More than 120,000 people were followed for almost 3 million person-years. What did the researchers find? That consumption of red meat is linked to an increased risk of premature mortality, not just from heart disease and cancer, as had already been known, but from all causes.

I think I'll have a veggie burger, thank you.

John Robbins is the author of eight books including the newly-released No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Food Revolution, and host of the Food Revolution Summit. Sign up for free to hear him interview 23 of the world's top food leaders at foodrevolution.org. John is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit http://www.johnrobbins.info.

For more by John Robbins, click here.

For more healthy living health news, click here.]]> What Rick Santorum Wants to Do to Women's Health tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1372391 2012-03-22T13:55:04-04:00 2012-05-22T05:12:01-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
But an assault on women's health rights is most definitely taking place, and the Republican candidates are not exactly standing in its way.

A law took effect in Texas last month. Now, a woman in this great state who seeks an abortion is coerced into undergoing a vaginal ultrasound. If she wants an abortion, this is what she has to endure. Lying there with her legs open while a probe is inserted into her vagina, she is required to listen to the fetal heartbeat, observe the fetus on a monitor, and listen to a lecture designed to shame her for even thinking about an abortion.

Of course, it's not just Texas. In state after state, bills are being passed that punish women who seek abortions, and that make abortions more onerous to obtain. A bill likely to become law in Tennessee requires the state to publish the names of each doctor who performs an abortion, and detailed statistics about any woman having the procedure.

And now we have Senator Rick Santorum, one of the leading candidates for the Republic nomination and a vehement foe of abortion even when a pregnancy is endangering the mother's life, declaring that contraception is evil, unnatural, and grievously harmful to society. Contraception, he says, is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

Supposed to be? According to whom? Somehow I get the impression that Rick Santorum is not on the leading edge of feminist thought in the country today.

Would someone please tell Santorum that the most realistic and humane way to reduce abortions is to fund and support family planning programs?

History has repeatedly shown that women continue to get abortions even when they are illegal, and even when they have to risk their lives to do so. Closing our eyes to this reality will not make it go away. Making abortion illegal does not succeed in eliminating abortion, but pushes the practice underground, making what can be one of the safest of all surgical procedures highly dangerous, and only marginally reducing the number that occur.

One of the most extreme examples of what can happen when someone like Santorum comes into power took place in Romania, when abortion was made into a criminal offense under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and contraception was made unavailable. For 14 years in Romania (ending in December of 1989), no woman under 45 with fewer than five children could obtain a legal abortion under any circumstances. The effort to prohibit abortion was so massive that it involved a special arm of the secret police force, called the "Pregnancy Police," who administered monthly checkups to female workers and monitored pregnant women. Nevertheless, the country exceeded virtually all other European nations on rates of abortion and abortion-related maternal mortality.

At the same time in Western Europe, legalization of abortion coupled with public education efforts on family planning and availability of contraception was dramatically reducing the number of abortions.

On the Swedish island of Gotland, for example, abortions were cut by 50 percent in three years by providing improved family planning services. That is a greater reduction in abortions than has ever been achieved anywhere through illegalization.

In the Netherlands today, abortions are not only legal, but are paid for by the state. This nation, where contraceptives are widely available and comprehensive sex education is an accepted part of the school curriculum, enjoys one of the lowest rates of abortion in the world.

The pattern is clear. Worldwide, more abortions occur in those nations where there is limited access to contraceptives. In 1990, the Soviet Union was home to 70 million women of childbearing age, yet did not have a single factory producing modern contraceptives. At that time the average Soviet woman was terminating between five and seven pregnancies during her reproductive years. Researchers in Soviet health at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. estimated that there were three abortions for every live birth.

When access to contraception for couples in Hungary was poor, the country had one of the highest abortion rates in the world -- even though abortions were illegal. But when Hungary undertook a campaign to reduce the abortion rate by distributing condoms, birth control pills, and IUDs, and educating people about their use, the results were stunning. Even as abortion was being made legal, there was a substantial decline in the number performed.

Why is it that Rick Santorum doesn't seem to grasp that the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions is to provide couples with the means to understand their fertility and to prevent unwanted pregnancies? This is one of the many reasons that we need to support birth control, family planning, comprehensive sex education, and other means to improve the health and welfare of women and children.

Currently, a remarkably high percentage of all U.S. abortions are undergone by teenage girls. Our woeful lack of education regarding family planning methods is one of the primary reasons that we now have the highest rate of unintended pregnancy among teenagers in the industrial world.

Rick Santorum opposes abortion. In this, he is not alone. But he also opposes contraception. His ideology, if it became public policy, would lead to enormous suffering for large numbers of women and families. And he'd like to become Commander-in Chief of our nation.

John Robbins is the author of 'The Food Revolution,' 'No Happy Cows,' 'Diet For A New America,' 'Reclaiming Our Health,' and many other best-sellers. A long time activist for a healthy and sustainable way of life, he is the recipient of many honors, including the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. You can learn more about his work here.]]> Can GMOs Help End World Hunger? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.914968 2011-08-01T14:14:58-04:00 2011-10-01T05:12:01-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
The hope that GMO foods might bring solutions to malnutrition and world hunger was never more dramatically illustrated than when Time magazine ran a cover story titled "Grains of Hope." The article joyfully announced the development of a genetically engineered "golden rice." This new strain of GM rice has genes from viruses and daffodils spliced into its genetic instructions. The result is a form of rice that is a golden-yellow color (much like daffodil flowers), and that produces beta-carotene, which the human body normally converts into Vitamin A.

Nearly a million children die every year because they are weakened by Vitamin A deficiencies and an additional 350,000 go blind. Golden rice, said Time, will be a godsend for the half of humanity that depends on rice for its major staple. Merely eating this rice could prevent blindness and death.

The development of golden rice was, it seemed, compelling and inspiring evidence that GM crops are the answer to malnutrition and hunger. Time quoted former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy, starvation is."

Shortly after the Time cover story, Monsanto and other biotechnology companies launched a $50 million marketing campaign, including $32 million in TV and print advertising. The ads, complete with soft focus fields and smiling children, said that "biotech foods could help end world hunger."

Other ad campaigns have followed. One Monsanto ad tells the public: "Biotechnology is one of tomorrow's tools in our hands today. Slowing its acceptance is a luxury our hungry world cannot afford."

Within a few months, the biotech industry had spent far more on these ads than it had on developing golden rice. Their purpose? "Unless I'm missing something," wrote Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine, "the aim of this audacious new advertising campaign is to impale people like me -- well-off first-worlders dubious about genetically engineered food -- on the horns of a moral dilemma ... If we don't get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the third world will go blind."

The implication of the ads is that lifesaving food is being held hostage by anti-science activists.

In the years since Time proclaimed the promises of golden rice, however, we've learned a few things.

For one thing, we've learned that golden rice will not grow in the kinds of soil that it must to be of value to the world's hungry. To grow properly, it requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides -- expensive inputs unaffordable to the very people that the variety is supposed to help. And we've also learned that golden rice requires large amounts of water -- water that might not be available in precisely those areas where Vitamin A deficiency is a problem, and where farmers cannot afford costly irrigation projects.

And one more thing -- it turns out that golden rice doesn't work, even in theory. Malnourished people are not able to absorb Vitamin A in this form. And even if they could, they'd have to eat an awful lot of the stuff. An 11-year-old boy would have to eat 27 bowls of golden rice a day in order to satisfy his minimum requirement for the vitamin.

I'm sure that given enough time and enough money, some viable genetically modified (GM) crops could be developed that contain more nutrients or have higher yields. But I'm not sure that even if that were to happen, it would actually benefit the world's poor. Monsanto and the other biotech companies aren't developing these seeds with the intention of giving them away. If people can't afford to buy GM seeds, or if they can't afford the fertilizers, pesticides and water the seeds require, they'll be left out.

Poverty is at the root of the problem of hunger. As Peter Rosset, director of Food First, reminds us, "People do not have Vitamin A deficiency because rice contains too little Vitamin A, but because their diet has been reduced to rice and almost nothing else."

And what, pray tell, has reduced these people to such poverty and their diets to such meager fare? In the words of the British writer George Monbiot:

The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech industry is to capture and monopolize the sources of wealth and the means of production ...

GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes which give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all.

No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else ... We are told that ... by refusing to eat GM products, we are threatening the developing world with starvation, an argument that is, shall we say, imaginative ...


With rare exceptions, genetically engineered crops are being created not because they're productive or because they address real human needs, but because they're patentable.

The biotech companies have invested billions of dollars because they sense in this technology the potential for enormous profit and the means to gain control over the world's food supply. Their goal is not to help subsistence farmers feed themselves. Their goal is maximum profit.

While Monsanto would like us to believe they are seeking to alleviate world hunger, there is actually a very dark side to the company's efforts. For countless centuries farmers have fed humanity by saving the seed from one years crop to plant the following year. But Monsanto, the company that claims its motives are to help feed the hungry, has developed what it calls a "Technology Protection System" that renders seeds sterile. Commonly known as "terminator technology" and developed with taxpayer funding by the USDA and Delta & Pine Land Company (an affiliate of Monsanto), the process genetically alters seeds so that their offspring will be sterile for all time. If employed, this technology would ensure that farmers cannot save their own seeds, but would have to come back to Monsanto year after year to purchase new ones.

Critics refer to these genetically engineered seeds as suicide seeds. "By peddling suicide seeds, the biotechnology multinationals will lock the world's poorest farmers into a new form of genetic serfdom," says Emma Must of the World Development Movement. "Currently 80 percent of crops in developing countries are grown using farm-saved seed. Being unable to save seeds from sterile crops could mean the difference between surviving and going under."

To Monsanto and other GMO companies, the terminator and other seed sterilizing technologies are simply business ventures that are designed to enhance profits. In this case, there is not even the implication of benefit to consumers.

I wish I could speak more highly of GM foods and their potential. But the technology is now held tightly in the hands of corporations whose motives are, I'm afraid, very different from what they would have us believe.

Despite the PR, Monsanto's goal is not to make hunger history. It's to control the staple crops that feed the world.

Will GMOs help end world hunger? I don't think so.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America" and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info
]]> Is McDonald's Betraying Our Kids By Barraging Them With Junk Food Ads? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.864956 2011-05-21T06:42:10-04:00 2011-07-21T05:12:02-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
That's why I think it's important that this week more than 550 health professionals and organizations signed an open letter to McDonald's, imploring the fast food giant to stop marketing junk food to kids. Many major metropolitan newspapers across the country are running full-page ads featuring the letter.

The letter doesn't so go far as to ask McDonald's to stop selling junk food to kids. It only asks them to stop aggressively advertising such foods to children.

Will it make any difference?

Critics say the campaign, organized by the nonprofit watchdog group "Corporate Accountability International," is just another attempt to undercut consumer freedom, just another effort by the food police to dictate what you and your children can eat.

McDonald's food may be junk, say such critics, but it's a personal choice. No one is physically forcing children to eat Big Macs. Where are parents anyway? Why don't they assume their authority and take responsibility? Are they just looking for someone other than themselves to blame because their kids are fat and unhealthy?

No one, not even McDonald's, doubts that we are witnessing an escalating epidemic of obesity and diet-related disease in children. In 1971, only 4 percent of 6- to 11-year-old kids were obese. By 2004, the figure had more than quadrupled, to nearly 20 percent, with nearly 40 percent now considered overweight. A lack of exercise probably isn't the cause of the increase, because many studies show that exercise levels in kids haven't changed much in the past few decades. What, then, lies at the root of the crisis?

We know that kids in the U.S. today consume more calories, and more junk food, than any similarly aged population in the history of the world. But why, and who is responsible? McDonald's places the blame for the situation squarely on the shoulders of parents. The problem, they say, is a breakdown in parental responsibility.

I am a staunch advocate for personal freedom and parental responsibility, which, you may be surprised to hear, is in fact precisely why I stand with the health professionals on this one. You see, there is a major problem with the marketing of junk food to malleable kids that is almost never recognized.

It is this: The ads are almost deliberately designed to compromise parental authority. The industry calls it "the pester factor." The PR companies who produce these ads speak happily of making kids "obnoxious," of getting them to "drive their parents crazy."

The idea is to get kids to want junk food so much that they nag their parents to take them to McDonald's, and to buy them other foods they have seen advertised, eventually breaking down parents' resistance. In the face of the relentless barrage of such advertisements, how many parents are able to hold their ground?

Is this one of the chief reasons there has been such a pervasive loosening of parental rules regarding food? Confronted with a constant stream of ads for junk food, and its nearly ubiquitous availability, parental authority around food issues has often declined to the point of becoming parental resignation.

The "pester factor" has enormous economic implications, as well. Advertisers estimate that one out of three fast food trips take place as a result of a child's nagging.

The marketing strategy is effective, but it's insidious. Traditionally, it has been parents who have taken leadership in deciding what their kids are going to eat. But McDonald's and other fast food companies spend billions of dollars a year on ad campaigns that target children, with the goal of taking that leadership away from the parents, and shifting it onto the kids themselves. In this way, the ads not only promote the consumption of junk food, with all the baneful health consequences we are witnessing today. What may be even worse is that at the same time the aggressive marketing of junk food undermines parental authority. The continual onslaught of such ads leads the parents to feel like bad guys for not giving kids what they want, and erodes the respect that parents receive from their kids.

To make the ads even more dubious, young children are not capable of understanding that the advertising is intended to manipulate their feelings and alter their behavior. Given that children can't comprehend the persuasive intent behind ads, is it ethical to advertise to them foods that are conclusively proven to be unhealthy? Should it even be legal?

Calling on McDonald's CEO and President, Jim Skinner, to "stop marketing junk food to kids," the letter was signed by a veritable who's who of luminaries in the world of healthy eating and disease prevention, including authors Andrew Weil and T. Colin Campbell. Other signators include David L. Katz, Director of Yale Prevention Research Center and editor-in-chief of Child Obesity; Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Marion Nestle, Paulette Goodard professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, and professor of Sociology, New York University; and Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health. The letter states:

As health professionals engaged directly in the largest preventable health crisis facing this country, we ask that you stop marketing junk food to children.

The rates of sick children are staggering. Ballooning health care costs and an overburdened health care system make treatment more difficult than ever. And we know that reducing junk food marketing can significantly improve the health of kids.

Our community is devoted to caring for sick children and preventing illness through public education. But our efforts cannot compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars you spend each year directly marketing to kids.

Today, our private practices, pediatric clinics, and emergency rooms are filled with children suffering from conditions related to the food they eat. In the decades to come, one in three children will develop type 2 diabetes as a result of diets high in McDonald's-style junk food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This generation may be the first in U.S. history to live shorter lives than their parents.

The rise of health conditions like diabetes and heart disease mirrors the growth of your business -- growth driven in large part by children's marketing...

While acknowledging that fast food is unhealthy, you pin responsibility for the epidemic of diet related disease on a breakdown in parental responsibility...

Even when parents resist the 'nag effect' cultivated by McDonald's to access the $40 - 50 billion in annual purchases that children under 12 control, advertising creates brand loyalties that persist into adulthood...

We ask that you... retire your marketing promotions for food high in salt, fat, sugar, and calories to children...


Will it do any good?

The day after the full-page ads began appearing in newspapers across the country, McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner made a public statement in response. Citing no evidence, he claimed that parents and customers were calling on him "to defend their right to choose." But the doctors and other health professionals who signed the letter were not asking McDonald's to stop selling junk food, only to stop advertising it to children.

McDonald's claims the company is doing enough already, by being part of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. But how effective is this program? It's an entirely voluntary pledge, with absolutely no enforcement mechanism, produced by representatives from Burger King, Coco-Cola, Hershey, Mars, Nestle, and PepsiCo, along with McDonald's. As you can imagine, the "pledges" made by various companies under the Initiative have stemmed the tide of marketing junk food to kids about as effectively as the New Orleans levees stemmed the tide of Hurricane Katrina.

McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner, whose take-home pay in 2009 was more than $17 million, insists the company will not budge.

But there is a precedent that suggests the full-page ad campaign might yet have an effect. Up until 2008, it was not uncommon for school report cards to carry the Golden Arches logo, offering a free Happy Meal to elementary school children who got good grades. McDonald's ended the program when the practice was noticed and a sufficiently irate public outcry ensued.

By shining a spotlight of attention on the impact McDonald's advertising has on the health of our kids, this campaign just might take a bite out of the happy, kid-friendly façade that the company has worked so hard to cultivate. After all, how kid-friendly is it to aggressively market products to kids which take a catastrophic toll on our children's health and ability to thrive?

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info
]]> Being Fat in America tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.840994 2011-03-26T12:16:26-04:00 2011-05-26T05:12:02-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
What does it say about us that we act as though you can take the measure of a person by the size bathing suit they wear?

Maybe this partially explains why obese people are flocking to a restaurant outside Phoenix, Arizona, whose name, and I am not making this up, is the Heart Attack Grill. The restaurant, which seats 100, is often packed. It offers what owner Jon Basso calls, "an environment of acceptance to overweight customers who are typically demonized by society."

But at this restaurant, it's a little more than acceptance. The Heart Attack Grill literally celebrates obesity. Customers who are over 350 pounds eat for free. A scale is strategically placed at the center of the restaurant, so other diners can watch the weigh-ins. When customers exceed 350 pounds, says the restaurant's owner, "Everybody applauds and cheers for them. A big smile comes over their face, and for once they are finally accepted. They are not picked on here."

It's all made to seem sexy, too. Waitresses, all of them young and slender, are dressed as scantily clad nurses, wearing high heels, thigh-high stockings, and skimpy outfits revealing lots of cleavage.

It sounds like fun.

Except when it isn't.

A few weeks ago, the 575-pound spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, a 29-year-old man named Blair River, died. It wasn't a heart attack, it was pneumonia. He had been the public face of the restaurant and the star of its advertising. He was also the single father for a five-year-old girl.

At nearly 600 pounds. Blair River ate all his meals free at the restaurant.

Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso did not deny the link between the young man's excessive weight and his tragically premature death. "I hired him to promote my food," said Basso, "(but his) life was cut short because he carried extra weight." Ironically, the restaurant's motto is "Food Worth Dying For."

Of course, no one is forcing anyone to eat at the Heart Attack Grill or to stuff themselves full of unhealthy food. It's a free country, in theory anyway, and we're free to eat ourselves to death if we want to do so.

Some would say that the Heart Attack Grill steps over a line, to the point of enabling dangerous food addictions. There is certainly nothing remotely resembling healthy on the menu. Customers can purchase cigarettes, but only the non-filtered type. On the wall are prominent displays advertising menu items such as "Quadruple Bypass Burgers" that carry 8,000 calories, and "Flatliner Fries" that are deep-fried in pure lard. Perhaps joking, owner Basso says, "We're in the front lines of the battle against anorexia."

But Blair River's death is no joke. And it would be a mistake to make light of the medical consequences of obesity. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that obese people have a substantially higher risk not only for heart attacks, but also for diabetes, most cancers, and many other types of cardiovascular disease.

Heart Attack Grill owner Basso doesn't plan any changes on account of the young man's death. Scantily-clad waitresses will still regularly exhort customers to eat all they can. He's making money, and thinks the restaurant is great fun.

But is it funny that we have become the most obese society in the history of the world? Two-thirds of the residents of the United States are now either overweight or obese. So many children are developing the most common type of diabetes that medical authorities have had to change the name of the disease. What was formerly called "adult-onset diabetes" is now called "type 2 diabetes." It accounts for 90 percent of the diabetes in the country, and the incidence in children is skyrocketing.

It's easy to point our fingers and pass judgment. We can blame fast food companies that aggressively market unhealthy foods to children, we can blame people who overeat for their lack of will power, and we can blame parents for feeding their kids poorly. We can blame harmful ingredients such as trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup, and we can blame the pressures of modern life that turn people into addicts of one kind or another.

We can play the blame game ad infinitum, but who does that help? Does it help those with weight problems that leave them vulnerable to disease and prone to feelings of shame?

What if we were instead to learn from those people who have taken the arduous, difficult, and ultimately joyful journey from obesity to health?

I have had the wonderfully good fortune recently to become friends with a young woman named Natala Constantine and her husband Matt. They've been married for seven-and-a-half years. At their wedding, Natala was morbidly obese.

She knew something about the abuse endured by obese people in our society. By then, she had lost track of the number of times she had been humiliated in public, called ugly names by strangers, and been physically hurt by people who felt entitled to treat her as less than human because of her weight.

People constantly told Natala she was lucky Matt had fallen in love with her, and that he must be amazing to be able to look past her weight.

A week after the wedding, she was diagnosed with severe diabetes. Her blood had become so acidic that her organs were shutting down, and doctors seriously doubted whether she would survive. She was 25-years-old.

Five years later, Natala was taking up to 13 different medications and as much as 200 units of insulin a day. She ate what many people would call a healthy diet -- lots of animal protein, and almost no carbohydrates. She had been told that a diet high in animal protein was the only way she could control her diabetes, but it wasn't working. She was working out at a gym for two to three hours a day, but at 5'2" tall, she weighed close to 400 pounds.

When Natala developed an infection in her right calf, doctors told her that part of her lower right leg might need to be amputated. But then a friend, who Natala described to me as "a vegan and into yoga," suggested that she consider a natural approach to her diabetes, and that she start to think of food as medicine. "I wanted to smash her," Natala admits. "How dare she suggest something so simple! Didn't she know that I had been to the best doctors, that I was on the best diet, that I was working out?"

But Natala did take her friend's advice to heart, and decided to go on what she calls a "100-percent healthy plant-strong diet."

"For the first three weeks," she says, "I felt as though I was ridding myself of much more than animal products. Food had a hold on me that I could not even conceptualize prior to those three weeks. I would sit in my car and cry outside of sub shops, just wanting a tuna melt."

It was very rough, but Natala stayed with it and the results were nothing short of miraculous. In 30 days, she was off all insulin.

The physicians she was seeing for her diabetes took a look at her numbers, were amazed, and wanted to know how she did it. "I told them I had adopted a completely plant-based diet. They didn't seem surprised at all, and told me that plant-based diets were helping to reverse diabetes. When I asked why they had not suggested it, they told me because it isn't practical."

Aghast, she asked her doctor, "Do you think it's practical to be 30 years old and lose a leg?"

She walked out of that doctor's office and never went back. "Everything changed from that moment," she recalls. "I slowly decreased all the other diabetes medicines I was on. I lowered my blood cholesterol without drugs. I lowered my blood pressure without drugs. I corrected my hormonal problems without drugs. Many diabetics go blind, but I reversed the nerve damage in my eyes. And that infection in my leg? It completely healed. The arthritis in my feet? It went away."

Today, Natala Constantine has lost almost 200 pounds, is medicine-free, and continues to make great strides toward her ideal weight. Her diabetes is in complete remission. I've met her and I can attest that she is one of the happiest and most radiant people you could hope to meet. A concert violinist, she exudes joy.

And her husband, Matt? While Natala was dealing with diabetes, he was not only obese but also suffered from severe food allergies. Eating a few tomatoes would send him to the emergency room. His food allergies dominated his life. And now? His improvement, on a 100-percent healthy plant-strong diet, is almost as miraculous as his wife's. A concert pianist, he has lost 90 pounds, is now a healthy weight, and his food allergies are entirely behind him.

It's quite a world we live in it, isn't it? On the one hand, we have the Heart Attack Grill, whose 570-pound spokesman died this month at the age of 29. On the other, we have people like Natala and Matt Constantine, who have taken a different path.

We live in a society that tends to cruelly stigmatize the obese. The Heart Attack Grill represents one form of response. It can feel empowering to turn shame into defiance. When society points its finger at you, blaming you and denying its own illness, there is a natural urge to send a message back to society with your middle finger.

But is there a healthier alternative? What about turning shame into a commitment to greater wellbeing and happiness? What about refusing to internalize society's negative messages, and instead building a healthy life of joy, confidence, and beauty?

Cutting back on heavily sweetened beverages like sodas and juice-like drinks is a good place to start. Eating less processed foods and more whole foods is another good step. Getting exercise helps a lot. And the more of your nutrients you can get from plant sources, the better.

Eat a healthy plant-strong diet, and your body will thank you for the rest of your life.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers include "The Food Revolution" and "Diet For A New America." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info"


]]> Chocolate's Startling Health Benefits tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.825978 2011-02-22T11:11:00-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
There is in fact a growing body of credible scientific evidence that chocolate contains a host of heart-healthy and mood-enhancing phytochemicals, with benefits to both body and mind.

For one, chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. These are substances that reduce the ongoing cellular and arterial damage caused by oxidative reactions.

You may have heard of a type of antioxidants called polyphenols. These are protective chemicals found in plant foods such as red wine and green tea. Chocolate, it turns out, is particularly rich in polyphenols. According to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the same antioxidant properties found in red wine that protect against heart disease are also found in comparable quantities in chocolate.

How does chocolate help to prevent heart disease? The oxidation of LDL cholesterol is considered a major factor in the promotion of coronary disease. When this waxy substance oxidizes, it tends to stick to artery walls, increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. But chocolate to the rescue! The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

And there's more. One of the causes of atherosclerosis is blood platelets clumping together, a process called aggregation. The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit this clumping, reducing the risks of atherosclerosis.

High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart disease. It is also one of the most common causes of kidney failure, and a significant contributor to many kinds of dementia and cognitive impairment. Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate daily can reduce blood pressure in people with mild hypertension.

Why are people with risk factors for heart disease sometimes told to take a baby aspirin every day? The reason is that aspirin thins the blood and reduces the likelihood of clots forming (clots play a key role in many heart attacks and strokes). Research performed at the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, found that chocolate thins the blood and performs the same anti-clotting activity as aspirin. "Our work supports the concept that the chronic consumption of cocoa may be associated with improved cardiovascular health," said UC Davis researcher Carl Keen.

How much chocolate would you have to eat to obtain these benefits? Less than you might think. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase total antioxidant capacity 4 percent, and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

Why, then, has chocolate gotten such a bum reputation? It's the ingredients we add to it. Nearly all of the calories in a typical chocolate bar are sugar and fat.

As far as fats go, it's the added fats that are the difficulty, not the natural fat (called cocoa butter) found in chocolate. Cocoa butter is high in saturated fat, so many people assume that it's not good for your cardiovascular system. But most of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.

Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And it has less antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than dark chocolate.

Does chocolate contribute to acne? Milk chocolate has been shown to do so, but I've never heard of any evidence incriminating dark chocolate.

Dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar. I'm sure you don't need another lecture on the dangers of excess sugar consumption. But if you want to become obese and dramatically raise your odds of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, foods high in sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) are just the ticket.

Are chocolate's benefits limited to the health of the body? Hardly. Chocolate has long been renown for its remarkable effects on human mood. We are now beginning to understand why.

Chocolate is the richest known source of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain small amounts of caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. The mood enhancement produced by chocolate may be primarily due to theobromine.

Chocolate also contains other substances with mood elevating effects. One is phenethylamine, which triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with sexual arousal and pleasure. Phenethylamine is released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.

Another substance found in chocolate is anandamide (from the Sanskrit word "ananda," which means peaceful bliss). A fatty substance that is naturally produced in the brain, anandamide has been isolated from chocolate by pharmacologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. It binds to the same receptor sites in the brain as cannabinoids -- the psychoactive constituents in marijuana -- and produces feelings of elation and exhilaration. (If this becomes more widely known, will they make chocolate illegal?)

If that weren't enough, chocolate also boosts brain levels of serotonin. Women typically have lower serotonin levels during PMS and menstruation, which may be one reason women typically experience stronger cravings for chocolate at these times in their cycles. People suffering from depression so characteristically have lower serotonin levels that an entire class of anti-depressive medications called serotonin uptake inhibitors (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zooloft) have been developed that raise brain levels of serotonin.

Since I am known as an advocate of healthy eating, I'm often asked about my food indulgences. One of my favorite desserts is a piece of dark organic chocolate, along with a glass of a fine red wine.

I do have a policy, though, to eat only organic and/or fair trade chocolate. This is because of what I have learned about child slavery in the cocoa trade.

May your life be full of healthy pleasures.


John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info







]]> The Dark Side of Recent Egg Headlines tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.823088 2011-02-15T08:48:48-05:00 2011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ announced that eggs are much higher in vitamin D than previously thought, and also 14 percent lower in cholesterol than previously believed.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of how it is that scientific authorities could have been so wrong for so long about something as basic as the levels of vitamin D and cholesterol in eggs, the new numbers are happy news indeed for egg lovers. The egg industry is delighted to report that you can now eat up to 10 eggs a week and still stay under the recommended limit of 300 mg of cholesterol per day for healthy adults (provided, of course, that you consume no other cholesterol at all from any other source).

This is putting a sunny-side-up grin on the face of those who enjoy eating eggs and don't fancy eating their way to a heart attack. But if it's making egg-lovers smile, it's like mainlining Prozac for the egg industry, which as you might expect is wasting no time trumpeting the news that their products have been exonerated.

But wait a minute. There's something that's being overlooked in all the hoopla, something that might be even more important than the milligrams of cholesterol in an egg. Do we care how the hens are treated? About the kind of conditions in which they live, and the quality of the food they are fed? Do we care if the eggs are produced humanely and sustainably? If the new dietary information means we'll be eating more eggs that come from sick hens who live in abject misery, is this such a good thing?

As I wrote in "The Food Revolution", the sad fact of modern industrialized egg production is that layer hens are crammed together in filthy cages so small that the birds are not able to lift a single wing. The amount of space the birds are given is less than they would have if you stuffed several of them into a file drawer. One building will frequently house 30,000 hens packed together under these grotesquely crowded and seriously unhealthy conditions.

The birds are driven so insane by these miserable conditions that they would peck each other to death if they could. The industry, of course, doesn't want to see such a thing happen, because there's no profit to be made from dead hens who don't lay eggs. How, then, does the industry prevent it? Not by giving the hens more room, which would be the humane response, but by cutting off a sizable part of the hens' beaks, a process known euphemistically as "beak trimming."

What's a concerned consumer to do? Fortunately, the Cornucopia Institute has come out with an "Organic Egg Scorecard" that empowers consumers with accurate information. The scorecard rates companies that sell name-brand and private-label organic eggs, according to the criteria that are most important to the majority of conscientious consumers.

There are two things the Organic Egg Scorecard quickly makes apparent.

The first is that just because eggs are "organic" doesn't mean they are humanely raised. In fact, there are "organic" factory farm operations with more than 80,000 "organic" hens in a single building.

The second thing the Organic Egg Scorecard reveals is exactly which brands of eggs found in your local stores are produced using the best organic practices and with the most ethical regard for the hens. If you are interested in which eggs are sustainable and humane, and which are not, check it out.

The results may surprise you. For example, the private label brands sold by Trader Joe's, Safeway O Organics, Whole Foods 365 Organic, WalMart's Great Value and Costco's Kirkland Signature, get the lowest possible rating. This is because these companies were unable or unwilling to provide any meaningful information about how their chickens are housed, fed or treated. Unfortunately, reports the Cornucopia Institute, "the vast majority of organic eggs for private label brands are produced on industrial farms that house hundreds of thousands of birds and do not grant the birds meaningful outdoor access."

Many egg suppliers tout that their eggs are produced without hormones. That sounds great but is in fact meaningless, because unlike beef and dairy products, no eggs produced in the U.S. today are legally produced with hormones. Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in raising poultry.

Whole Foods, at least, has taken a step in the right direction by not selling any eggs that come from hens whose beaks have been "trimmed." Whole Foods shoppers can take a modicum of comfort in knowing that eggs bought there do not come from the worst of the nation's egg factories.

If you want the eggs from healthy and happy hens, you might want to take a step in the direction of food self-reliance and keep a few hens in your backyard. Or get your eggs from a neighbor or from a small-scale farm you can actually visit. Or purchase only those eggs which are highly rated by the Organic Egg Scorecard.

Personally, my favorite breakfast is guaranteed to be cruelty-free. It's oatmeal, with cinnamon, raisins and walnuts, which aren't added only for flavor. Oats are a comparatively low-glycemic index grain to begin with, but the addition of walnuts creates a nourishing breakfast with high protein content, high nutrient density, a healthy form of fat, and a very low glycemic index.

Here's my recipe for a tasty and hearty breakfast that will provide you with consistent blood sugar levels, and give you plenty of energy all morning. Serves three.

1 cup rolled oats
3 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts

1. Place oats, water, salt, cinnamon and raisins in a covered saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Turn down heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Remove from heat, stir in walnuts and serve hot.


John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit here.
]]> What Should We Learn From The Deaths Of Fitness Icons? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.815943 2011-01-31T17:48:29-05:00 2011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
Jack's death reminded me of the life and untimely death of another fitness icon of the 20th century, Jim Fixx. Jim's books were wildly popular, and his work was credited for helping start the fitness revolution in the Western world. But while Jim shared with Jack a passion for the health-giving benefits of exercise, these men differed on a crucial point: Jim believed that exercise was key, and that diet and nutrition played a far smaller part in health.

Like Jack LaLanne, Jim Fixx was unhealthy in the early part of his life. Up until his mid-thirties, he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, loved his burgers and shakes, and weighed 220 pounds. At age 35, he stopped smoking and began running. Within a short time he was running 80 miles a week, racing marathons, and had lost all his excess weight. His belief in the healing powers of running was tremendous. In his bestselling book, The Complete Book of Running, Fixx repeatedly quoted Thomas J. Bassler, M.D., a California pathologist who was then advancing the theory that marathon runners actually develop a sort of immunity from heart disease. Fixx repeatedly quoted Bassler's assertion that any nonsmoker fit enough to run a complete marathon in under four hours would, regardless of his or her diet, never suffer a fatal heart attack.

Jim Fixx thought that a healthy diet wasn't that important. He believed that if you don't smoke and if you exercise sufficiently, you are protected against heart disease.

Fixx knew that his father had died of a heart attack at age 43. But he believed that exercise (and the improved circulation it generates) would be an adequate defense. He thought that as long as he ran daily and didn't smoke, he would stay healthy and avoid his father's fate.

Jim didn't just ignore expert advice that he needed to eat more healthfully. He went out of his way to forcefully criticize those who offered such advice. At the time, probably the world's foremost advocate of eating a healthy diet as a means to open and heal clogged arteries was Nathan Pritikin. In his book titled Diet for Runners, Pritikin described a conversation he had with Jim Fixx:

Jim Fixx phoned me and criticized the chapter "Run and Die on the American Diet" in my book The Pritikin Promise. In that chapter, I said that many runners on the average American diet have died and will continue to drop dead during or shortly after long-distance events or training sessions. Jim thought the chapter was hysterical in tone and would frighten a lot of runners. I told him that was my intention. I hoped it would frighten them into changing their diets. I explained that I think it is better to be hysterical before someone dies than after. Too many men, I told Jim, had already died because they believed that anyone who could run a marathon in under four hours and who was a nonsmoker had absolute immunity from having a heart attack.


Sadly, only six months after this conversation, a passing motorcyclist discovered a man lying dead beside a road in northern Vermont. He was clad only in shorts and running shoes. The man was Jim Fixx.

Jim Fixx, the nation's leading spokesperson for the health benefits of running, had tragically died of a massive heart attack while running alone on that country road. Only 52-years-old, he paid a terrible price for his belief that he didn't have to pay much attention to nutrition, and for thinking that exercise alone was sufficiently protective. An autopsy revealed that three of his coronary arteries were more than 70 percent blocked, and one was 99 percent obstructed.

You may have heard the Jim Fixx story before. He became the butt of late-night jokes as overweight comedians made fun of the fact that the running guru had died of a heart attack. Sedentary people often want to believe that exercise isn't that important. They comfort themselves by telling and retelling the Jim Fixx story, as if the moral was that there's no harm in being a couch potato. But to do that is to miss the point entirely.

The real moral of Jim Fixx's tragic death is that while exercise is wonderful and necessary for a healthy life, it cannot make up for poor eating habits.

Sadly, many people exercise regularly, and believe that by doing so they can make up for almost any manner of dietary transgressions. One woman I know regularly eats rich desserts immediately after exercising, on the grounds that she "has earned it." Each time she exercises, she calculates the number of calories she has burned, and then treats herself to a piece of cheesecake of that same (or slightly higher) number of calories. And then she wonders why she isn't losing weight.

On the other hand, I know people who are extremely fastidious about what they eat, but don't exercise. Over time, as their bodies begin to break down, they tend to become even more picky about their food. They may spend thousands of dollars on supplements, but somehow never manage to get off their butts.

It takes both. As Jack LaLanne often said, "exercise is king, and nutrition is queen. Put them together and you've got a kingdom."

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution" and "Diet For A New America," and of the recently released "The New Good Life." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit here.]]> Jack LaLanne Dies: Who the Fitness Guru Really Was tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.812902 2011-01-24T08:09:02-05:00 2011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/ Jack LaLanne died on Sunday, at the age of 96. He was a mentor to me, as he was to many. He was a great man, more so than most people realize.

His wife of 51 years, Elaine LaLanne, knew. "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon," she said, "but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for."

When it comes to exercise and health, the name Jack LaLanne has long been virtually synonymous with fitness. Jack literally inspired millions to live a healthful life. But Jack LaLanne didn't start out as a model of health. Far from it.

When he was a teenager, he dropped out of school for a year because he was so ill. Shy and withdrawn, he avoided being with people. He had pimples and boils, was thin, weak, and sickly, and wore a back brace. "I also had blinding headaches every day," Jack recalled. "I wanted to escape my body because I could hardly stand the pain. My life appeared hopeless."
Then he met the pioneer nutritionist Paul Bragg, who preached a new way of living, and to his credit, Jack listened. Bragg asked Jack, "What do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?"
"Cakes, pies, and ice cream," Jack answered truthfully.

"Jack," Bragg replied, "you're a walking garbage can."

He pointed young Jack in a healthier direction. That night Jack got down on his knees by the side of his bed and prayed. He didn't say, "God, make me the strongest man in the world." Instead, he asked for a new beginning. "God, please give me the willpower to refrain from eating unhealthy foods when the urge comes over me. And please give me the strength to exercise even when I don't feel like it."

Jack set out to see what he could accomplish with a good diet and exercise. He found a set of weights and began to use them. He ate only the most healthful of foods. He developed exercise equipment that evolved into what has become standard in many health spas today. In 1936, he opened the first modern health club, paying $45 a month for rent in downtown Oakland.

Jack LaLanne touted the value of exercise and nutrition long before it became fashionable. Many people thought he was a charlatan and a nut. When he encouraged the elderly to lift weights, doctors said this was terrible advice. They said it was a good way for the elderly to break bones. But now, of course, we know that weight-bearing exercise is precisely what is needed to build bone strength and prevent elderly bones from breaking. He was among the first to advocate weight training for women. Doctors said women who tried it would not be able to bear children. Now we know that regular exercise is one of the best preparations for childbirth. Over the years, he's been vindicated a thousandfold. His television programs have brought his ideas to hundreds of millions of people and helped change the way we all view health and fitness.

It has been said that without eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress. Jack LaLanne was most certainly an eccentric. On his 60th birthday, he swam from the notorious Alcatraz island prison to San Francisco while handcuffed, towing a thousand-pound boat. "Why did you do that?" people asked. Jack's response: "To give the prisoners hope." (The prison has since closed, and today Alcatraz Island is a U.S. National Park Service attraction.)
On his 65th birthday, Jack LaLanne towed 65 hundred pounds of wood pulp across a lake in Japan. On his 70th birthday, he celebrated by towing 70 rowboats with seventy people on board for a mile and a half across Long Beach Harbor, all while handcuffed and with his feet shackled.

He said his purpose in these phenomenal performances was to demonstrate that a healthful lifestyle can work wonders.

Having pioneered health and fitness gyms in the United States, Jack was gratified that physical fitness and nutrition have become a huge growth industry worldwide, because he believed that the emphasis on exercise and a healthful, natural diet creates stronger, smarter, and better people. "With healthier citizens," he said, "we unburden society from sickness, and reduce the medical bills that are draining people's savings and causing so much grief."

Even in his 90s, Jack was a living testimony to the value of regular exercise and a healthful lifestyle. He was for many years a vegan (no meat, dairy, or eggs), but in his later years, though he still ate no dairy products -- "anything that comes from a cow, I don't eat" -- he occasionally ate egg whites and wild fish. Mostly, he ate organic raw fruits and vegetables. And he took vitamins.

His vibrant message was that it's never too late to get in shape. "Those who begin to exercise regularly, and replace white flour, sugar, and devitalized foods with live, organic, natural foods, begin to feel better immediately," he said. He emphasized that it takes both nutrition and exercise. "There are so many health nuts out there who eat nothing but natural foods but they don't exercise and they look terrible. Then there are other people who exercise like a son-of-a-gun but eat a lot of junk ... Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you've got a kingdom!"

Even at the age of 95, Jack LaLanne was still a model of fitness and vitality. Full of life and spirit, his one-minute "Jack LaLanne Tip of the Day" pieces were still being shown on seventy television stations. As energetic and flamboyant as ever, he was still speaking all over the world, inspiring people to help themselves to a better life, physically, mentally, and morally.
When he was 94, Jack was asked if he thought he'd live to be 100. His answer was to the point. "I don't care how old I live! I just want to be living while I am living! I have friends who are in their 80s, and now they're in wheelchairs or they're getting Alzheimer's. Who wants that? I want to be able to do things. I want to look good. I don't want to be a drudge on my wife and kids. And I want to get my message out to people." He smiled. "I tell people, I can't afford to die. It would wreck my image."

He was once asked about George Burns, the famous comedian who made it to 100 though he smoked cigars, drank alcohol and was not health-oriented. Jack, it turns out, knew George Burns well, and he answered, "George Burns was more athletic than you think he was. And he was a very social man. He loved people, he enjoyed life. He worked at living. Old George was a social lion, he got around and did things. That's the key right there. It starts with your brain."

Jack LaLanne was a man of great accomplishments. But perhaps his greatest achievement was that this once painfully shy and sick young man learned to love people and to love being alive.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers include "The Food Revolution" and "Diet For A New America." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info.



]]> Who's Done More Damage, Bernard Madoff or Alan Greenspan? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.795250 2010-12-11T10:36:40-05:00 2011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
Tragically, what happened to my family overnight is happening to many, many people today, only more slowly. It is one of the darkest nightmares of our times that so many people are losing their homes, their pensions, their jobs, their savings, and any semblance of financial security. The official unemployment rate is 9.8 percent, but if you include the underemployed (those who have part-time work but can't find a full-time job, though they need one), and add in also the huge numbers of unemployed people who have given up looking for work because they feel the search is hopeless, the figure rises to above 22 percent. There are already 19 million vacant homes in the country, with another 10 million foreclosures in the pipeline. The average household credit card debt is nearly $16,000. And the U.S. dollar, which has been the world's reserve currency for almost 100 years, is losing value and appears increasingly unstable.

How did we ever get into such a mess?

Last year, a Newsweek poll found Bernard Madoff to be the most despised person in history. Having been a victim of his fraud, I understand. But some people think that when it comes to wreaking financial havoc, Madoff was a piker compared to the man who was dubbed history's greatest Federal Reserve chairman upon his retirement in 2006 -- Alan Greenspan.

Why? Because Greenspan may be more responsible than any other single human being for the disastrous developments in our nation's economy. Author Matt Taibbi doesn't mince words on the subject. In his new book about how bubbles and bailouts have decimated the U.S. economy, he none-too-subtly calls Greenspan "the biggest asshole in the universe."

Madoff lived high and mighty as a billionaire as long as he kept his Ponzi scheme afloat. Greenspan was revered as long as he kept the party going for the ultra-rich, as long as he kept one bubble after another inflated. But with every party, there's always the morning after. The collapse of Madoff's Ponzi scheme bankrupted not just tens of thousands of families, but many charitable foundations, nonprofit organizations, and hospital and school endowments. The bursting of Greenspan's bubbles, on the other hand, decimated the entire U.S. economy, bankrupting tens of millions of families.

In his biography of Greenspan, appropriately titled Greenspan's Bubbles, MSN Money columnist William Fleckenstein recounts the devastating series of bubbles and crashes that directly ensued from Greenspan's policies. The Savings and Loan scandal was the first tip-off. As a paid consultant for Lincoln Savings and Loan, Greenspan was an ardent advocate of Savings and Loan deregulation. When Lincoln's parent corporation went bankrupt in 1989, more than 21,000 mostly elderly investors lost their life savings.

This was, however, peanuts compared to what was to follow. With Greenspan as the head of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, and with his policies running the show, the tech bubble was inflated only to burst in 2000, closely followed by the real estate bubble that began to burst in 2007, and the credit bubble that burst in 2008.

Greenspan's policies contributed massively to each of these bubbles, and thus to their inevitable collapse. Like Madoff's Ponzi scheme, they provided illusory returns, not based on any real goods, services or value provided, but rather on the attraction soaring returns have for new entrants into the game.

The costs of each of these market collapses are measured not in the billions but in the trillions of dollars, and they've come so quickly on the heels of one another that we may think of them as business as usual. That's why it's important to grasp that, prior to Greenspan's arrival, the U.S. had been nearly bubble-free for more than 50 years. The only exception? A brief mania for gold and other precious metals in late 1979 and early 1980.

Prior to running the Federal Reserve, Greenspan headed the National Commission on Social Security Reform. The original intent behind Social Security was generous and benevolent. At the height of the Great Depression, our society resolved to create a safety net that would pay modest benefits to retirees, the disabled, and the survivors of deceased workers. It was the formalizing of the long-respected tradition of supporting elders and others who are less able to fend for themselves. The idea was to create less fear and more economic security.

But once Greenspan got involved, things immediately began to change. His policies triggered a staggering transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes into the hands of the richest members of society. It is not an exaggeration to say that the resulting concentration of money and power in the hands of the few is undermining the economy, corrupting democracy, deepening the racial wealth divide, and tearing communities and families apart.

It was primarily due to Greenspan's proposals that the Social Security tax rate went from 9.35 percent in 1981 to 15.3 percent in 1990. Social Security taxes are borne primarily by the lower and middle economic classes. They only apply to wage income, not to investment income, so people who work for a living pay through the nose while those who invest for a living pay not at all. Fair, right?

Social Security taxes are currently capped at about $106,000. This means that a married couple who earns $106,000 a year will pay more than $16,000 in Social Security taxes. They will pay the same amount that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his wife will pay, even though Ellison's income over the past 10 years was nearly $2 billion.

A couple near the bottom of the economic ladder, earning $30,000 a year between them, obviously has nothing to spare, yet they pay $4,590 in Social Security taxes. Billionaire investors and hedge-fund managers, meanwhile, may pay nothing, because they can usually structure their income so that none of it is subject to Social Security or Medicare taxes.

The policies that were implemented following the recommendations of Greenspan's commission have produced, in the last 20 years, $1.7 trillion in new taxes borne almost entirely by the lower and middle class. There might have been some justification for this if the amount of benefits you would eventually receive was directly related to the amount of money you paid into the pool, and if the money was set aside for future Social Security recipients. Prior to Greenspan's reforms, that's essentially how things were done. But thanks to his innovations, this is no longer the case. The money is no longer held separate from the rest of the budget, and has been used instead for other government spending.

It was George W. Bush's first Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill who publicly announced the bad news. "I come to you as managing director of Social Security," he said. "Today we have no assets in the trust fund. We have the good faith and credit of the United States government that benefits will flow."

It's hard to avoid noticing that Social Security is increasingly taking on some of the characteristics of a legally-mandated Ponzi scheme.

Bernard Madoff was a liar and psychopath who recklessly stole tens of billions of dollars. He will spend the rest of his pathetic life in prison. Alan Greenspan, on the other hand, is still widely admired. Not that long ago, he was almost considered a candidate for Mt. Rushmore. He was certainly the most influential proponent of financial deregulation in the last century.

But a generation from now, who will history judge with more scorn?

For practical, down-to-earth advice on how you can thrive in these hard economic times, see John Robbins' new book, The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. John's other bestsellers include The Food Revolution and Diet For A New America. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info.]]> How Bad Is McDonald's Food? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.754814 2010-10-08T08:00:00-04:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00 John Robbins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/
Morgan Spurlock sought to find out in his 2004 documentary Super Size Me. In his film, I was interviewed and spoke about the role McDonald's food is playing in our epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

For 30 days, Spurlock ate only McDonald's food. All of us involved in the film, including Spurlock's doctors, were shocked at the amount that his health deteriorated in such a short time. Before the 30 days started, we each predicted what changes we expected to see in his weight, cholesterol levels, liver enzymes and other biomarkers, but every one of us substantially underestimated how severely his health would be jeopardized. It turned out that in the 30 days, the then 32-year-old man gained 25 pounds, his cholesterol levels rose dangerously as did fatty accumulations in his liver, and he experienced mood swings, depression, heart palpitations and sexual dysfunction.

Some have said Spurlock was an idiot for eating that way, and it's true that he did himself some major damage in those 30 days. But I've always felt the suffering he took upon himself by eating all his meals for that month at McDonald's was admirable, because it served to warn millions of the all too real health dangers of eating too much fast food.

Super Size Me struck a chord for a lot of people, as it became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. And more importantly, it changed the eating habits of millions.

Now a group of physicians and other health professionals have produced a short (39 second) ad that may be one of the more controversial in advertising history. The Washington, DC-based group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)'s new "Consequences" ad takes dead aim at McDonald's high-fat menu. The provocative ad has become a story unto itself, because it has in only a few days generated nearly one million views on YouTube, and has been covered by newspapers and broadcast media around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, U.K.'s The Guardian, CNN, the New York Times and hundreds of other media outlets.





What do you think? Is the ad a contribution to public health, or does it go too far? Even if the underlying critique of the dangers of hamburgers and other fast food is valid, does the ad accomplish its purpose, or is it too emotionally manipulative?

The ad ends by telling us to "make it vegetarian," making it obvious that PCRM has a pro-vegetarian orientation. But with good reason. The evidence is consistent and compelling that vegetarians suffer less from the diseases associated with the typical Western diet. Vegetarians have repeatedly been shown to have lower rates of obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, type II diabetes, diverticular disease, constipation and gall stones. They also have lower rates of many kinds of cancer, including colon cancer and the hormone dependent cancers such as prostate cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer and ovarian cancer.

Do you have to be a strict vegetarian to enjoy the considerable health benefits of a vegetarian diet? No, you do not. What's important is to eat a plant-strong diet, with a high percentage of your calories coming from whole foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and a low percentage coming from processed foods, sugars, unhealthy fats and animal products.

The standard American diet -- in which 62 percent of calories come from processed foods, 25 percent from animal products and only 5 percent from fruits and vegetables -- is nothing less than a health travesty. Our fast-food culture has produced a population with widespread chronic illness and is a primary reason that health care costs are taking a devastating toll on just about everyone.

The annual health insurance premiums paid by the average American family now exceed the gross yearly income of a full-time minimum wage worker. Every 30 seconds, someone in the U.S. files for bankruptcy due to the costs of treating a health problem. Starbucks spends more on the health insurance of its workers than it does on coffee.

Medical care costs in the U.S. have not always been this excessive. This year, we will spend more than $2.5 trillion on medical care. But in 1950, five years before Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant, Americans only spent $8.4 billion ($70 billion in today's dollars). Even after adjusting for inflation, we now spend as much on health care every 10 days as we did in the entire year of 1950.

Has this enormous increase in spending made us healthier? Earlier this year, when the World Health Organization assessed the overall health outcomes of different nations, it placed 36 other nations ahead of the United States.

Today, we have an epidemic of largely preventable diseases. To these illnesses, Americans are losing not only their health but also their life savings. Meanwhile, the evidence keeps growing that the path to improved health lies in eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes, and eating far less processed foods, sugars and animal products.

It's striking to me that in all the heated debates we have had about health care reform, one basic fact has rarely been discussed, and that is the one thing that could dramatically bring down the costs of health care while improving the health of our people. Studies have shown that 50 to 70 percent of the nation's health care costs are preventable, and the single most effective step most people can take to improve their health is to eat a healthier diet. If Americans were to stop overeating, to stop eating unhealthy foods and to instead eat more foods with higher nutrient densities and cancer protective properties, we could have a more affordable, sustainable and effective health care system.

Is it McDonald's fault that more than 63 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, making us the fattest nation in the history of the world? I don't think so, because each of us is responsible for what we put in our mouths and in the mouths of our children. Plus many other fast food chains serve food that is just as harmful. But the company is playing a significant role in generating our national appetite for unhealthy foods. McDonald's is by far the largest food advertiser in the country, spending more than one billion dollars a year on direct media advertising.

Much of McDonald's advertising is aimed at children, and it's been effective. Every month, approximately nine out of 10 American children eat at a McDonald's restaurant. Most U.S. children can recognize McDonald's before they can speak. Tragically, one in every three children born this year in the U.S. will develop diabetes in their lifetime.

Of course, fast food is not the only cause of the tragic rise of obesity and diabetes in our society. Our culture has become pathologically sedentary. Watching television and sitting in front of computer monitors for hour upon hour doesn't help. But the high sugar and high fat foods sold by McDonald's and the other fast food restaurants is certainly a major part of the problem. You would have to walk for seven hours without stopping to burn off the calories from a Big Mac, a Coke and an order of fries.

John Robbins is the author the just released tenth anniversary edition of "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life And Our World." He is also the author of many other bestsellers, including the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." John is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. For more info about his work, or to sign up for his email list, visit johnrobbins.info.]]>