Renewable Farming

The dangers of blindly believing “official” medical mandates

The U.S. government’s updated dietary guidelines reject a scientific panel’s urging to cut sugar and alcoholic intake. How much pressure did corporate food processors apply on USDA and Health and Human Services? What other medical mandates are endangering your family because of political pressures, such as lockdowns and masks?

December 29, 2020  By Jerry Carlson — At Renewable Farming, one of our foundational goals is improving American’s health and immune system with toxin-free, nutrient-dense and tasty food. My family follows the advice of Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” 

However, today’s release of official government diet guidelines bowed to corporate food industry pressure on two points:

1. USDA and HHS did not amend their current recommendation saying it’s okay for Americans to get 10% of their daily calories from added sugar. The 20-member scientific panel from industry and government urged a 6% limit.

2. The latest guidelines also ignored the advisory panel’s urging to cut daily alcoholic consumption by half, to one alcoholic drink per day. Industry data show that during the Covid-19 pandemic months of March 1 through August 1, average daily total alcohol consumption rose 23.6%.

Mortality data during the pandemic indicates that obesity is one of the most common “co-morbidities” or weakening factors for Covid patients. Centers for Disease Control data show that 42% of Americans are obese, and another 30% overweight. You can check the CDC’s definition of obesity at this link. Despite spending $3.6 trillion annually on “health” care, Americans are among the sickest national populations on the planet. For comparison, Japan’s population is only 4.3% obese.

The joint USDA/HHS release on dietary recommendations, “Make Every Bite Count,” outlines the government’s five-year standard.

The good news about these guidelines: The agencies did produce a website with several practical guides to more healthy eating than in past years. It’s at www.myplate.gov, if you want to paste that URL in your bookmarks.

A recent USDA “Food Pyramid”

The first USDA “food pyramid” guide emerged sometime in 1950 and hasn’t changed a lot since. Americans are finding their own routes to dietary health from multiple sources. There’s a new fad diet or two every year.

The discouraging news: The USDA guides and most others rely on calorie counting, while ignoring crucial factors which many scientists and practical observers see as essential:

1. There’s scant current recognition of declining mineral content of most fruits and vegetables raised on conventionally fertilized and pesticide-treated soil. I’ve found estimates from several years ago saying produce quality has declined 30% to 50% since WWII. Yet there hasn’t been any substantial research on produce quality in recent years. A Scientific American report in 2011 noted that you “would have to eat eight oranges today to derive the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have gotten from one orange.”

The underlying reason for tasteless tomatoes has been obvious for generations: depleting mineral levels in our soils. Also, seed companies breed for yield, not nutritional density. When’s the last time you tasted a really sweet strawberry from California or Mexico? Our family buys high-brix strawberries from one of our WakeUP clients. 

2. We’ve seen no long-term population studies measuring the human health impact of chemical residues, especially glyphosate. Even though several high-profile court cases have linked glyphosate residues in humans to cancer, our EPA continues to extend its registry. A few scientists  and physicians (those free from government, university and corporate constraints) point to cumulative toxic impacts on human health. Abundant evidence indicates glyphosate disrupts the critical microbial balance in our digestive systems. Somehow, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears unconcerned about this.  

One of our friends who has crusaded for years to present the facts about glyphosate is MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Seneff. Remarkably, a YouTube video she made in 2013 hasn’t been censored. It’s at this link. I suggest you open the video at 18 minutes to skip the preliminaries. Another video backs up Dr. Seneff: It’s Dr. Don Huber being interviewed by Dr. Joseph Mercola, at this link.

3. The food processing and retailing industry crushed a popular consumer effort to label foods which have significant genetically modified ingredients. The federal law which finally passed is virtually invisible to consumers. Now the food processing industry is intent on allowing unconstrained “gene editing” which sounds precise but is highly disruptive to plant genomes. These subjects have been concerning to many scientists for years. Here’s an example — a 2011 video of Dr. Joseph Mercola interviewing Dr. Don Huber about the health threats of genetically modified crops.  

4. A “USDA Organic” label helps assure you of minimal chemical residue. But it’s no assurance of full mineral content. A handy tool for estimating nutritional quality of fresh fruit and vegetables is a brix refractometer, which gives you a quick estimate of total dissolved solids in the plant juice. Do an online search for “brix refractometer”. Many are priced over $100, but cheaper ones are under $25 and they’re good enough for veggies and fruits.

As we’ve mentioned before, American farmers are the foundation of Americans’ health! You’re instrumental in building up immune systems against contagious diseases, and preventing systemic, chronic diseases like diabetes, heart diseases and cancer. Here’s another version of a “food pyramid” that’s closer to what health-intent Americans are focusing on:

5. The single most powerful current impact on human health is the Covid-19 pandemic. Not the virus alone, but the politically imposed hysterical lockdowns, masking, social distancing and pursuit of vaccines as the exclusive, official responses. 

As of Dec. 30, 2020, the clearest, quickest summary of why official health responses are tragically misguided is today’s analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola at this link. It’s titled, Why Lockdowns Don’t Work and Hurt the Most Vulnerable. Mercola reinforces his assertions by drawing on an analysis from an Irish statistician and researcher: Ivor Cummins. I found Cummins’ video presentation — appended to today’s Mercola report — powerfully convincing. Ironically, Cummins uses a World Health Organization assertion that lockdowns are useless against such a viral pandemic… but that observation was in 2019, before the political forces spun panic beyond rational analysis.

I’d never heard of Ivor Cummins before today. Mercola’s link to his presentation led me to find Cummins’ YouTube video blog, which as of today has 164,000 subscribers. (I’m astonished Google/YouTube hasn’t censored it.) Cummins also has a Twitter series tagged @fatemperor. This tag must be a takeoff on the legendary vain emperor who paraded naked, being duped by a simple tailor into believing he had fine clothes. I don’t expose myself to Twitter, so I don’t follow Cummins there. You can read a brief description of Cummins at this link.

Side note: If Cummins ever aims his analytical prowess at the statistical correlations between glyphosate tonnage and the soaring array of chronic diseases, he may well suffer the same attacks which befell one of my acquaintances in the state of Washington who presented that data in a 2014 research paper. She’s in hiding, fearful of serious threats.

Update Dec. 31, 2020: 

We know a few veterinarians who are very concerned about impacts of glyphosate and genetically modified grain on health of cattle, hogs and horses. Canadian DVM Ted Dupmeier, and one of our neighboring large-animal veterinarians in northeast Iowa, Dr. Art Dunham, have seen herd health improve dramatically when farmer-feeders and dairymen clients switch to non-GMO rations. As shown link under item 2 above, it’s well-known that glyphosate residue in plants disrupts gut bacteria in livestock. Also, gene alterations to introduce rootworm resistance produce toxins which can be 20 times more potent than natural bacterium thuringiensis (BT). These toxins also damage the gut biome in livestock.

However, concerned veterinarians find it difficult to convince colleagues to advise farmer-feeders to raise non-GMO, non-glyphosate corn and soybeans for better livestock health.

In our efforts to hear from more veterinarians, my wife Jill asked help from Janet D. Donlin, DVM, CAE, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Veterinary Medical Association. We have high regard for the AVMA. Jill’s father, Dr. M. R. Clarkson, DVM, LLB, was past president and also Executive Vice President of the AVMA, retiring in 1971. In October 2020, Jill sent a letter to Dr. Donlin, finishing with this request: 

“My father was intrigued — and later very concerned — with the growing use of genetically modified crop organisms, and their eventual presence in animal feed.

 “I am thankful that you keep an open mind to such matters, and notify your membership that AVMA policies are voluntary and not legally mandatory. So, in this climate of freedom, I would very much appreciate if you could refer me to any AVMA veterinarians who are advising a closer look at the feeding of GMOs.”

 As of Dec. 31, 2020, Jill has not received a response from anyone at the AVMA.