The Kushi Institute of Europe & ACS Cancer Recommendations

[Guest guest]

AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY

http://www.macrobiotics.nl/encyclopedia

 

Eating red meat contributes to cancer, the American Cancer Society

warned. Issuing stronger dietary recommendations than ever before in

1996, the ACS recommended curtailing all red meat, not just high-fat

meat, as the Government recommends. It linked red meat with

increased risk of colon and prostate cancer, as well as rectal and

endometrial cancer.

 

The ACS also took aim at high-calorie, fat-free processed foods that

contribute to overweight, noting that obesity is associated with

colon, rectal, prostate, endometrial, and kidney cancers and breast

cancer in post-menopausal women. As an alternative to meat, the

society recommended dried beans, seafood, and organic poultry.

 

In another departure from current government policy, the society

said that alcohol consumption increases, even a few drinks, can

increase the risk of breast cancer and therefore it could not go

along with federal guidelines that allow one or two drinks daily.

The society's four main guidelines were: 1) eat a diet high in whole

grains, vegetables, and fruits; 2) eat a diet low in high-fat foods,

particularly from animal sources; 3) maintain a healthy weight and

perform moderate physical activity for 30 minutes or more on most

days, and 4) limit or avoid alcohol. See Macrobiotics.

Source: Marian Burros, " Tough New Warning on Diet Is Issued by

Cancer Society, " New York Times, September 17, 1996.

 

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION

Since the 1960s, the American Heart Association has cited faulty

diet as the main cause of cardiovascular disease and continually

revised its dietary guidelines in the direction of more whole,

unprocessed foods.

The list of recommended daily foods includes a wide range of

vegetables and fruits, including broccoli, cabbage, mustard greens,

kale, collards, carrots, pumpkins, and winter squash; breads,

cereals, pasta, and starchy vegetables including whole-grain bread

and brown rice; poultry, fish and seafood, nuts, dried beans, peas,

and other meatless main entries including tofu; and cold pressed

fats and oils.

 

The list of foods to avoid included milk, most cheeses, ice cream,

and other high-fat dairy products; eggs (maximum 2 per week) and

foods prepared with eggs; red-meat, cured meat, and organ meats; and

hydrogenated fats and oils; sugary desserts, store-bought desserts

and mixes, and highly processed snacks.

 

Source: The American Heart Association Heartbook (New York: Dutton,

1980), pp. 65-66 and " The American Heart Association Diet " (Dallas:

American Heart Association, 1985).

 

ANIMAL WASTE

Animal manure poses a national environmental risk. Amounting to 1.3

billion tons a year in the U.S., it exceeds the amount of human

waste by 130 times, and there are no national standards for treating

it. See Water.

 

• Animal Waste Major Water Polluter - According to a report by the

U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee, animal waste is the major water

polluter in the U.S. For example, a single 50,000-acre hog farm in

Utah creates more waste than the city of Los Angeles and has no

sewage plant to treat it. Premium Standard Farms, the nation's

second largest hog producer, produces five times more waste than the

city of St. Louis. The study found that 60 percent of the nation's

rivers and streams were " impaired " by agricultural runoff. In 1996,

for example, 40 animal waste spills killed 670,000 fish in Iowa,

Minnesota, and Missouri, double the number of spills four years

previously. Excess nutrients form agricultural runoff have flowed

down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico where they have

created a dead zone, in which no living organisms can survive, the

size of New Jersey.

Source: " Large Amounts of Animal Manure Pose Environmental Risks, "

Associated Press, December 28, 1997; Stan Grossfeld, " Animal Waste

Emerging as U.S. Problem, " Boston Globe, September 21, 1998.

 

• Animal Waste and Pollution of Chesapeake Bay - The outbreak of

pfisteria piscida, a microorganism that has decimated fish

populations in Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest and richest

coastal estuary, has been linked with animal wastes along Maryland's

rural Eastern Shore, site of one of the country's largest

concentration of poultry farms. Physicians further confirmed that

people who eat contaminated fish were at risk of coming down with a

mysterious illness first observed by local fisherman that is

characterized by chronic difficulties with learning and memory, as

well as skin rashes and respiratory problems. Even young, vigorous

men were unable to remember simple, basic things.

 

Excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from the poultry

farms have polluted rivers in the region and are believed to have

turned the organisms, first identified in 1992, from a benign spore

lying on the bottom of streambeds, into a powerful toxin. The

Eastern Shore, encompassing part of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia,

has 625 million chickens, and the poultry industry is growing at a

rate of 20 percent yearly. " When you've got such a huge

concentration [of animals] with literally millions of tons of waste,

the land is not going to be able to absorb it, " Chad Smith a local

environmentalist noted.

Source: David Lauter, " Livestock Wastes Pose Health Threat, " Los

Angeles Times, September 21, 1997.

 

ANTIBIOTICS

Initially, penicillin and other antibiotics proved to be extremely

effective, saving the lives of millions of people who otherwise

would have died. However, the euphoria surrounding these " miracle

drugs " quickly began to fade. Streptomycin almost completely lost

its effectiveness after two months of use, especially on pulmonary

tuberculosis. It also left many patients deaf or permanently dizzy.

However, because the life-saving benefits still clearly outweighed

the drawbacks, postwar physicians continued to prescribe strong

drugs like these, and they became the treatment of choice for most

acute conditions.

Within several decades, they began to be used prophylactically to

prevent future infection, as well as remedially to treat existing

disease, and antibiotics were routinely added to livestock feed,

over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and other non-

prescription products.

In the United States, 240 million doses of antibiotics are

prescribed every year, almost one per person. One of every three

hospital patients receives an antibiotic, and physicians routinely

administer antibiotics for everything from the common cold to

pneumonia.

Altogether, medical use accounts for 60 percent of antibiotic use.

The other 40 percent is used in livestock feed to promote rapid

growth. By 1980, 75 percent of all cattle in the United States

received antibiotics, 90 percent of swine and veal calves, 50

percent of sheep, and nearly 100 percent of chickens and poultry.

The drugs not only were used to prevent infection but to fatten up

the animals and ensure maximum growth—and thus profits.

In recent years, research has shown that antibiotics can interfere

with the production of red blood cells, the metabolism of vitamin B-

12, and kill benign or beneficial bacteria in the intestines that

synthesize Vitamin K, biotin, riboflavin, panthothenate, and

pyridoxine. These nutrients are all associated with proper immune

function and protection against disease.

 

Side-effects associated with antibiotic use and misuse include

diarrhea, rashes, fever, allergic reactions, hemolytic anemia,

bleeding, bone marrow toxicity, and disorders of the kidneys, liver,

and central nervous system.

 

The rapid spread of candida albicans and other acute infections has

been associated with chronic antibiotic use that has disrupted the

normal homeostasis in the digestive system and enabled the selection

of pathogenic strains of yeast, fungi, bacilli, and other

microorganisms. See Drug-Resis-tance, Infectious Diseases.

 

• End of the Antibiotic Era? In a review of the history and

therapeutic use of antibiotics, two medical researchers in Texas

document how the modern science was lulled into complacency. " The

scientific community grossly underestimated the remarkable genetic

plasticity of these organisms and their ability, through mutations

and genetic transfer, to develop resistance to antibiotics, " they

explain.

 

" Antibiotic resistance has made potential killers out of bacteria

that previously posed little threat to mankind. The indiscriminate

and reckless use of antibiotics has led to a fast ap-proaching

crisis in which human dominance of the planet is threatened by

single, elementary cells of the microbal world. "

Source: J. W. Harrison and T. A. Svec, " The Beginning of the End of

the Antibiotic Era?, " Parts I and II, Quintessence International 29

(3):151-62, 1998 and 29(4):223-29, 1998.

 

• Overprescription of Antibiotics - Abuse of antibiotics is

contributing to disease, according to researchers at the University

of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Every year doctors write 12

million antibiotic prescriptions—one in every five—for colds,

bronchitis and other viral infections for which antibiotics are

useless. " Every time we use an antibiotic, we run the risk of

promoting antibiotic resistance, or drug resistance, by bacteria, "

said lead scientist Ralph Gonzales.

In the last 10 years, an epidemic of Streptococcus pneumoniae that

is resistant to penicillin drugs has developed and is a leading

cause of ear and sinus infections, meningitis, and other common

illnesses.

Source: R. Gonzales et al., " Antibiotic Prescribing for Adults with

Colds, Upper Respiratory Tract Infections, and Bronchitis by

Ambulatory Care Physicians, " Journal of the American Medical

Association 278(11) " 901-4, 1997.

 

• Dangers of Antibiotics - In a critique of modern medicine and

agriculture, a noted public health official presents evidence that

the overuse of pharmaceuticals is creating an epidemic of new drug-

resistant diseases.

" The sheer magnitude of this assault [the creation of new diseases

by antibiotic-resistant microbes] is staggering. For four decades

now, we have thrown hundreds of tons of antibiotics against our

Hollywood imagination of microscopic enemies. In the process we have

sown seeds for a whole new array of actual germs and diseases. . . .

We favor simple technological fixes for complex disease entities,

while our medical complex fosters a near-sighted one-germ, one-

chemical mentality. Together, these positions contribute to a world

view that encourages the proliferation of new chemotherapeutic

agents, and in turn, the proliferation of new disease

entitles. . . . The answer clearly does not consist of throwing more

troops into a losing battle. "

Source: Marc Lappé, When Antibiotics Fail: Restoring the Ecology of

the Body, (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1986).

 

• European Meat Tests Positive for Drug-Resistant Bacteria - In

samples from a European Union-licensed meat-processing plant, German

researchers found that 8 percent of minced beef and pork samples

tested positive for vancomycin-resistant enteroccoi (VRE),

antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria associated with human

infections.

Source: G. Klein et al., " Antibiotic Resistance Patterns of

Enterocci and Occurrences of Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci in Raw

Minced Beef and Pork in Germany, " Appl Environ Microbiol 64(5):1825-

30, 1998.

 

• WHO Calls for End to Antibiotics in Livestock Feed - The World

Health Organization has recommended phasing out the use of

antibiotics to promote livestock growth. " Farms are factories of

drug resistance, " stated Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for

Adaptation, Genetics, and Drug Resistance at the Tufts University

School of Medicine. " The non-therapeutic misusage is just causing

more multi-drug resistance in human therapy. They can transfer

resistance, whether it's something we eat or touch or waste that's

tilled into another source. "

Source: Stan Grossfeld, " Animal Waste Emerging as U.S. Problem, "

Boston Globe, September 21, 1998.

 

http://www.macrobiotics.nl/encyclopedia/encyclopedia_a.html#alternati

ve_medicine