Cells are created and maintained by extremely complex actions and interactions,
but nature takes care of that complexity. Your job is rather simple: Make certain that
your cells obtain what they need. Choosing health means learning how to supply
your cells with what they need while keeping them free of what they don’t need. Cells have great powers to take care of themselves and to repair themselves—to stay
healthy—unless they are overwhelmed by poor diets, unhealthy habits or
environmental hazards. Your daily choices determine whether your cells stay healthy
or get sick. We are ready to begin our journey through the cells of your body. Picture that we
have traveled to the largest industrial park you can imagine. Around the park is a
security wall designed to keep out intruders, to prevent the loss of essential
materials, and to regulate the passage of materials in and out of the park. Inside the
park are powerhouses designed to make the energy necessary to keep the park
working. These powerhouses, in turn, require fuel, oxygen and other essentials on a
round-the-clock basis in order to do their jobs. Also inside the park are different factories and manufacturing plants that require a
continuous supply of energy and raw materials in order to meet their daily quota offinished products. Coordinating all these activities are computer and communication
systems that regulate the delivery of raw materials and the removal of wastes, as
well as the production, storage and distribution of finished products. All of these
systems are based upon a set of design blueprints containing all the information
necessary to build a new park. You have just toured the human cell. Each cell has a wall— the membrane—
whose purpose is to keep out toxins, bacteria, viruses and other harmful substances,
while still allowing nutrients to reach inside where they are needed. The membrane
also prevents healthy and necessary substances from leaking out of the cell, while
still allowing waste products to be excreted. Powerhouses in the cell create energy
and manufacturing plants make the finished products your body needs, such as
neurotransmitters, hormones and antibodies. Your cells also have electrical and
communication systems that help to keep everything working in balance. Cells have
many important jobs to perform during every second of every day; anything that
interferes with these tasks is a threat to health. Every day hundreds of billions of cells need to be replaced. Building a new cell
requires a long list of raw materials, similar to building a new car or a computer. If
even one part is missing, the product will be defective, and if many parts are
missing, malfunction is guaranteed. As each new cell is created, you are choosing
either health or disease, depending on whether the new cells you are building are
healthy or not. You make this choice when you order at a fast-food drive-up window, when you
stay up too late, when you spray cleaning products around your house, when you take
your daily vitamin supplement or when you choose to take no supplements. Making
a single bad choice here and there is generally not a problem, but when you
consistently make bad choices, daily living can wear down your tissues faster than
they can be repaired or replaced. Building and Operating Healthy Cells
To be healthy, each day old cells must be replaced with new ones and each must
perform all of its intended functions. Do you know what raw materials you need to
build healthy cells? Are you eating the right foods—foods whose calories are packed
with the building blocks required to make healthy new cells? Does anyone really
believe it is possible to build healthy cells from coffee, donuts, white bread, pasta,
potato chips, french fries and ice cream? How many of the raw materials necessary
to build and operate healthy cells do these foods contain? The answer is not many,
which is one reason that we have so much disease. A chronic shortage of vitamins, minerals, water, oxygen or other nutrients causes
your cells to malfunction. You may be unaware this malfunction is happening,particularly at the early stages, but a chronic shortage of even one nutrient
eventually makes you sick. When shortages are chronic, the body stops repairing and
self-regulating; cells then deteriorate into a diseased state or die. Building healthy cells starts in a mother’s womb. If an embryo suffers from a
shortage of building materials or the presence of toxins, a child born with birth
defects may be the result. During pregnancy, certain parts of the fetus are being
constructed during specific weeks—such as the brain and nervous system, the
circulatory system and the digestive system. If essential raw materials are
unavailable at that crucial time or toxins are present, any of these systems can be
affected, perhaps manifested as heart defects, digestive problems, lower I.Q.,
attention deficit disorders and so on. We’re not talking about genetic defects here,
but defects that result from building a baby in an unhealthy environment. In extreme
situations, the construction process simply shuts down and the fetus is naturally
aborted—an ever-increasing occurrence in our society. A newborn baby’s health is the product of the genetic material from the parents
and 
the supply of building materials and presence of toxins (from the mother) during
gestation. People wrongly assume that genetics by itself explains the health or
disease of their child. Congenital defects (those present at birth) are not necessarily
the result of genetics. For example, the December 2001 issue of 
Lancet 
reported a
study regarding supplemental vitamins taken during pregnancy. Mothers who had
taken both folic acid and iron supplements during pregnancy gave birth to children
who were 60 percent less likely to develop the most common form of childhood
leukemia. Eating right is especially important for expecting moms. Like any disease,
leukemia doesn’t “just happen.” The quality of the cells, tissues and systems a baby
is born with has a lifelong effect. Whether caused by nutritional deficiency or toxic exposure, trouble can begin
when your cell factories are supposed to be making something but are not making
enough or have shut down. If cell factories are unable to make sufficient antibodies,
we become susceptible to infections. When cell factories cannot make sufficient
neurotransmitters, mental function suffers. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals
generated by nerve cells that send information throughout the nervous system,
allowing us to think, learn and remember.) When unable to make sufficient
hormones, communications and self-regulation are disrupted. Hormones are chemicals produced by specialized cells that travel through the
blood and lymph systems to bring messages to other parts of the body. Blood sugar
level, for instance, is balanced primarily by two hormones, both produced by
specialized cells in the pancreas. Although each cell is a living entity unto itself, bodily systems can only be
regulated and controlled when cells are able to communicate effectively with each
other. Impaired cellular communications is one of the most basic commondenominators of disease, no matter how the disease happened or what it is called. Cellular communication and feedback systems regulate everything from body
temperature to immunity to movement. When these systems break down gradually,
as they often do in disease, we may not notice. We are more familiar with sudden
and severe breakdowns in bodily communication, such as spinal injuries that cause
paralysis. We fail to recognize how subtle communication breakdowns precipitate
chronic and terminal health problems. Each time you order at a restaurant, each time you reach into your cabinet for
cooking oils, each time you plan your day’s meals, you are basically deciding
whether you will build strong cells or weak ones. It really is that simple. The choice
is yours to make. Are you going to maintain your body or let it fall apart? Toxins Shut Systems Down
A variety of toxic chemicals and metals can damage cells. Like grains of sand,
toxins can jam cellular machinery and even cause entire cell factories or
powerhouses to shut down. Many toxins disable enzymes, which are necessary for the chemical reactions that
make our lives possible. The number of chemical reactions required to make life
possible is astonishing; in a cell, an estimated 6 trillion such reactions take place
every second. Enzymes make these reactions possible. About two thousand kinds of
enzymes have been identified, and they are manufactured by our cells to accomplish
a variety of tasks. Enzymes act as little machines, putting things together or taking
them apart at amazingly high speed. Without functioning enzymes, cell factories and
assembly lines shut down. The kind of enzymes a particular cell manufactures distinguishes and determines
what kind of cell it is (for example, a nerve cell or a muscle cell). Enzymes serve a
variety of purposes and must be constructed with many different nutrients. Enzymes
contain essential mineral atoms, such as zinc, magnesium, iron and chromium. If
these building materials are not present in sufficient quantity, enzyme function (and
therefore cell function) is impaired. Take zinc, for example. The retina contains
enzymes constructed with zinc and is a zinc-rich tissue. If you do not have enough
zinc in your diet, your retina and other zinc-rich tissues, such as the prostate, will be
impaired before obvious effects are noticed elsewhere in the body. Night blindness
and malfunctioning prostates are common symptoms of zinc deficiency. However, even if dietary zinc is adequate, but this nutrient is replaced in the
enzyme by a toxic metal—such as mercury, arsenic, cadmium or lead—the presence
of this toxin disables the enzyme and causes disease. Toxic heavy metals are a prime
example of how toxins can cause cellular malfunction, and our bodies contain
hundreds of times more toxic metals than they did in our ancestors a century ago.Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that we are commonly exposed to from dental work
—amalgam fillings contain mercury. Municipal water supplies contain toxins such
as aluminum, fluoride and arsenic. Even in trace amounts, these toxins can
deactivate enzymes and impair vital bodily systems. They can cause our systems to
shut down. They must be avoided. Building and using enzymes properly is an essential part of good health, as
enzyme dysfunction is a common denominator of disease. Maintaining proper
enzyme balance is one reason to eat fresh organic foods. Organic produce is richer in
the vitamins and minerals that enable us to build enzymes and coenzymes, and it is
less toxic, too. Enzyme function can also be enhanced with high-quality dietary
supplements. The First Line of Defense
A cell’s first line of defense against disease is the cell membrane, the security
wall that surrounds the cell and carries out many important functions. Healthy
membranes, built from appropriate materials, protect cells from harmful invaders—
including viruses. Malfunctioning membranes allow bacteria, viruses, toxins and
other harmful substances to damage cells. The presence of poorly constructed cell
membranes formed from poor diets is one of the biggest reasons that almost all
Americans get sick. The cell membrane controls everything that goes into and out of a cell. Making
certain that only the right things go in and out of the cell is a critical and complex
task that only can be accomplished when the cell membrane is constructed correctly. The membranes that surround each of the trillions of cells in your body are made
mostly of fats and oils. Membranes constructed out of the wrong fats and oils do not
function properly, which is a problem for most Americans. For example, diets with
excessive amounts of saturated fats, which are rigid molecules, create rigid cell
membranes that lack necessary elasticity. Catastrophic failures, such as ruptured
blood vessels and torn muscles and tendons, can occur in tissues made from these
rigid cells. Cell membranes are made primarily of fatty molecules called phospholipids. Special kinds of oils called essential fatty acids (EFAs)—omega-3s and omega-6s—
are used to create the phospholipids in cell membranes. These oils are essential
because your body is unable to produce them; these oils must be obtained through
diet. An overwhelming majority —some estimate as much as 90 percent—of the
U.S. population may be deficient in the correct assortment of essential fatty acids. When the correct raw materials are lacking, the body makes cell membranes out of
whatever raw materials are available. These materials include the hydrogenated oils
found in margarine, vegetable shortening, baked goods and breakfast cereals; thesaturated fats from meat and dairy products; and the trans-fatty acids found in
processed salad and cooking oils. Cell membranes built from these inappropriate
fats and oils cause the membrane and the entire cell to malfunction. For example, building a cell membrane from hydrogenated oils impairs the
passage of oxygen into the cell, and oxygen-deficient cells become cancerous. None
of us would build a house with cardboard walls. Why, then, do we build our cell
membranes—our first line of defense against disease—out of junk materials like
margarine, vegetable shortening and supermarket oils? Modern diets fail to supply
adequate amounts of the correct essential fatty acids. I recommend supplementation
with high-quality essential fatty acids and fish oils (see appendix C). Weak and Rusty
To be healthy, cells must be supplied with adequate amounts of antioxidants. Cell
membranes and the factories and powerhouses inside of cells can be damaged from
oxidation via free radicals. Picture how oxidative damage (rust) would cause the
Golden Gate Bridge to disintegrate were it not painted with a protective coating each
year. Currently, our bodies are immersed in a sea of highly reactive chemicals—
such as ozone in urban air and chlorine in tap water—that create oxidative damage
to our bodies. You likely have heard reports about antioxidants (such as vitamins A,
C and E) and how they protect us against free radical damage. Free radicals damage our cells just like rust corrodes metal. Free radicals have
unpaired electrons. Electrons, which travel in pairs, are charged particles orbiting
around the nucleus of atoms. An unpaired electron aggressively seeks a mate, trying
to “grab” an electron from something else, perhaps a molecule that is performing an
important job in one of your cell membranes. Once the electron is grabbed, that
molecule can no longer perform its job properly; furthermore, the molecule now
becomes a free radical itself, aggressively seeking its own electron mate. The
subsequent chain reaction can result in serious cellular damage commonly
associated with aging and disease, unless the body’s tissues are rich with
antioxidants that can stop hazardous chain reactions as soon as they begin. Free radicals are naturally produced as we metabolize oxygen. Free-radical chain
reactions are constantly being produced and stopped inside your body. Cells were
designed to cope with these reactions, but not of the magnitude that is present today. For example, chlorine, a highly oxidizing gas put in municipal tap water, can easily
damage our skin and lungs. Taking a shower in chlorinated water is like stepping
into a chlorine gas chamber—a health hazard of which most people are totally
unaware. We can make choices to protect our cells, but first we need to know the
source of the damage. Today, we expose ourselves to free-radical damage from chemicals to which our
biological ancestors were never exposed. Our modern environment is filled withsubstances that cause free radicals to form, such as ozone, chlorine, pesticides,
tobacco smoke, petroleum byproducts, synthetic perfume and many others. We need
more antioxidant protection than ever, because we are exposed to so many more free
radicals. The problem is that the need for antioxidant nutrients is up while the supply
in our diet is down. To avoid the weak and rusty body—to slow the aging process and keep disease at
bay—the sensible solution is to stop the free-radical damage. The necessities are
simple: a diet rich in antioxidant nutrients along with antioxidant supplements, and
clean food, water and air. None of these ideas are new, but what people don’t
understand is why they are important. If you allow free radicals to damage your cells
—to allow them to become weak and rusty—your body ages faster and becomes
vulnerable to disease. Salt Is Often at Fault
To be healthy, the nutrients in cells must be in proper balance. Upsetting the
natural balance of chemicals inside a cell causes the cell to malfunction, which is
what is happening to the balance of sodium and potassium in our cells. Over the past
one hundred years, our diets have changed dramatically, increasing the amount of
sodium and decreasing the amount of potassium in our diet, thus reversing the
natural balance. Modern food manufacturers add lots of salt (sodium chloride) to
their products, while modern diets do not include enough potassium-rich foods such
as fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. When our genes were
evolving, human diets contained little sodium and a lot of potassium. For example,
eating an apple provides only 1 mg of sodium, but 310 mg of potassium. Eating a
piece of modern apple pie provides 110 mg of sodium and only 80 mg of potassium,
a drastic change. Salt-rich diets force excess sodium into cells, disturbing the normal and healthy
sodium/potassium balance. Among other problems, excess sodium interferes with
cellular energy production, causing fatigue. Sodium attaches itself strongly to water
molecules, so when more sodium goes into the cells, so does more water. Water
retention elevates blood pressure and causes weight gain. Dietary salt contributes to
an increased incidence of cancer and metastasis, cardiac disease, stroke, kidney
disease, bronchial problems and kidney stones. By avoiding processed and packaged
foods, most of our excess dietary sodium can be eliminated. An Important Litmus Test
Healthy cells must have the correct pH. In addition to the dangerous imbalance of
sodium and potassium, our modern lifestyles and diets have detrimental effects on
another critical balance: the pH of our cells. Commercials commonly tout “pH
balanced” shampoos for our hair, and most of us remember the litmus paper testsfrom our chemistry sets or grade-school experiments—those tiny sheets of paper
that turn pink or blue based on pH. Cells must maintain proper pH balance, and our
food choices affect that balance. The pH is a measurement of acidity or alkalinity. On the pH scale, 7 is neutral; 0
to 7 is acidic, and 7 to 14 is alkaline. The normal pH inside of a cell is about 7.4,
which is slightly alkaline. Maintaining normal pH in the fluid inside the cell as well
as in other body fluids is critical for keeping body systems functioning normally. Most of the chemical reactions in the body, including the production of energy,
occur most efficiently in an alkaline environment. The enzymes involved in these
reactions are pH sensitive and only function within a narrow pH range; pH level
affects other vital operations, such as the transport of substances through cell
membranes. You can monitor your acid/alkaline levels by using pH paper (see
appendix C). Modern diets often cause cellular pH to drop below 7.0, into the acidic range. (Cells also can become too alkaline, but excessive acidity is most common.) A cell
that becomes too acidic is said to have intracellular acidosis. Acidosis, an extremely
serious condition, is one of the common factors present in many manifestations of
disease. The more acidic a cell becomes, the more impaired its function. At very
high acidic levels, the cell will die. Herman Aihara, author of 
Acid and Alkaline,
says that “one of the important causes of cancer— and other degenerative diseases—
is the cumulative effect of the acidic condition of body fluid.”
How do cells become too acidic? Different foods have different effects on our pH. Ideally, we should consume only foods that maintain proper cellular pH. Instead, we
consume a diet high in foods that have an acidic effect, such as sugar, soft drinks,
white flour (pasta and bread), excessive protein and salt. Consumption of these
foods, which deplete the body of alkaline materials, has skyrocketed over the past
few generations. Because acidosis is such a threat, the body tries to prevent it by using its own
alkaline minerals (such as calcium and magnesium) leached from the bones and
teeth, leading to dental problems and osteoporosis. By contrast, fresh and
unprocessed foods, rich in alkaline minerals, help keep pH within normal limits. For
this reason, among others, most of our calories should come from fresh, unprocessed
vegetables, fruits, beans and whole grains. Concerned about your pH? Measure the pH of your first morning urine before
eating. This test offers an indicator of your cellular pH and can be used to monitor
changes as you work to normalize your pH. First morning urine should be in the
range of 6.5 to 7.5. If readings fall below 6.5, you are too acidic. Occasional readings
above 7.5 are normal, but consistent readings above 7.5 are an indication of tissue
breakdown, and a pH over 8.0 is a serious matter. Fatigue is often reflected in an
acidic pH.Why Am I So Tired? Fatigue is one of the most common complaints made to physicians today. During
the onset of my own illness, the first thing I noticed was fatigue. I simply did not
have the energy I had been accustomed to having. So many people—epidemic
proportions, actually—are tired and lack energy, but they do not know what to do
about it. Indeed, when I told my doctor about my fatigue, he told me it was the result
of aging. In truth, the fatigue had nothing to do with growing older and everything to
do with becoming sicker. All cells require energy to function. Your cellular powerhouses use enzymes to
turn carbohydrates, fatty acids and amino acids into energy the body is able to use. Fatigue occurs because the body’s energy production systems have been impaired. The powerhouses (called 
mitochondria
) may not be receiving sufficient fuel or
oxygen, may have been damaged by free radicals, may have the wrong pH, or may
have their enzymes disabled by toxic chemicals. The high-energy compounds made
by the powerhouses, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate), are made in large
quantities when we sleep, which is one reason that an under-rested person functions
poorly and lacks energy. Don’t Blame Your Parents
Genes are the blueprints for the structure and function of every cell in our bodies. Although we inherit genes from our parents, how we maintain and care for our genes
determines how well our cells work. Over a lifetime, to some degree, genes
deteriorate and mutate naturally, but what we must focus on are man-made free
radicals that accelerate or distort this natural process. Minimizing the damage is
crucial; important steps are to avoid: radiation from medical X rays and other
sources, environmental chemicals, prescription and recreational drugs, alcohol,
tobacco smoke and even char-broiled meat. Minimizing the damage also means
protecting genes with good nutrition—particularly foods containing ample
antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins A, C, E and the mineral selenium. Many people assume that “bad genes” or a family history of disease predestines
them to be sick. In truth, while genetic predispositions do put a person at risk for
disease, what a person chooses to do to protect the health of their cells and genes
plays a more important role in whether or not disease develops. Choices, rather than
genetic inheritance, are the key. We must focus on how we play the game, not the
cards we were dealt; what we eat, what we do and what we are exposed to determines
how healthy we will be.Learning a New Way
Unfortunately, a common medical response to a diseased organ is to remove it
surgically. Before taking such a drastic action, why not give the cells that make up
that organ what they need, keep them free of what they do not need and restore the
organ to health? Modern lifestyles—diets and toxins—create the formulas for cellular malfunction
and disease, yet traditional medical practices ignore them. How often have you, a
friend or a relative consulted a physician and been given a diagnosis or treatment but
were not asked even one question about how you care for or neglect your body? Not
asked even one question about what you eat, what harmful substances invade your
environment or how you live your life in general? More commonly you are asked
about symptoms alone. Traditional medicine does not make us healthy and, worse
yet, can make us sick and promote our death. Drugs, surgeries and other medical
procedures that disregard the causes of disease—not fixing the problems inside the
cells and instead addressing symptoms— can never cure the disease. Disease is not
about “diseases,” it is about cells; diagnoses and treatments should always reflect
this approach. The battle between sickness and health takes place within every cell in your body. Choosing healthy cells means following each of the six pathways in a positive
direction; let us move on to the first of the six: the nutrition pathway.5
T
HE 
N
UTRITION 
P
ATHWAY
“The well-nourished American is a myth. Despite the high
level of education and the abundance of available food, many
people make poor food choices and are badly nourished. . . . [T]he average human diet, nutritionally unfit for rats, must be
equally unsatisfactory or even more so in meeting human needs.”
Carl Pfeiffer, M.D., Ph.D. Mental and Elemental Nutrients
M
eet Elizabeth. For eight years Elizabeth has waged a losing battle against chronic
fatigue. She suffers from painful arthritis (with measurable bone loss in one
shoulder), and she takes powerful pain medications daily. Overwhelming exhaustion,
coupled with the pain, prevent her from working or participating in meaningful
activity. She has seen numerous medical doctors and alternative practitioners, but
she is not improving. After hearing me speak at a chronic fatigue support group, Elizabeth reached out
for my help. Within a few months Elizabeth’s pain was gone and her energy was
soaring. A year later, she returned to work, at a six-figure income. “Raymond gave
me back my life,” she tells friends. In reality, I simply taught her how to give her
cells the nutrients they were desperately missing. Even more simply, I taught
Elizabeth how to shop for food, prepare meals and find high-quality vitamin
supplements. Simple, essential and life-saving. To become healthier, Elizabeth began to consume more nutritious foods, eat more
raw foods and fewer cooked ones. She was careful about which foods to combine
together. She cut back on sugar, white flour, hydrogenated oils and milk products, as
well as coffee. These choices literally made Elizabeth a changed woman; her whole
life and health were turned around by improving the chemistry inside her cells. Her
fatigue and arthritis pain gradually disappeared, and she actually repaired much of
the damaged bone tissue in her arthritic shoulder. In various forms, Elizabeth’s story of declining health is played out millions of
times each day in this country. Few Americans go to bed hungry, but almost all
Americans go to bed malnourished, some severely so. This concept may be difficult
to accept because we typically envision malnourished third-world people with
distended bellies and listless eyes. In truth, “well-fed” Americans, including those—
or perhaps especially those—who are overweight, are “starving” for the kinds of
food needed to become and stay healthy. Most of us eat the wrong foods. I call them “make-believe” foods that do not meet
the needs of our cells. In fact, 90 percent of the typical American food budget is
spent on make-believe foods. Most of us spend lots of money and lots of time
shopping for and preparing meals that are, in small and large ways, killing our cells,creating disease and shortening our lives. We shop in supermarkets full of empty-calorie foods. We buy foods that have
been so mishandled that they no longer offer the nutrition we think we are buying. We prepare and cook our foods in ways that destroy their nutritional value. Nearly
all of us—from junk-food junkies to “health-conscious” consumers—are being
misled into believing that low-fat products and typical supermarket meat and
produce can build a healthy diet. Consider:
• Too much of our diet is created from an officially approved “Big Four” list of
foods that fail to nurture our bodies and also create toxins that sicken us. The
Big Four? Sugar, white flour, processed oils and milk products. Even foods
touted as “healthy,” such as multi-grain breads, usually contain impoverished
flour. • We eat the cells of unhealthy plants and animals, which cannot create healthy
cells in our body. Pigs and other livestock are fed toxic diets. Chemicals used
during growing, harvesting, processing, transporting and storing diminish
nutrients in produce. In no way can such food support our cell chemistry. • Too little of our food—virtually none for many people—is eaten raw. Cooking
damages foods’ nutritional values. Some cooking methods, particularly those
that use high heat or that char foods, create powerful mutagens and carcinogens. • Handling and preparation methods—from extended storing of foods in a
refrigerator or freezer to chopping and mashing—rob foods of many nutrients
such as vitamins and minerals that we believe we are consuming. The average
person preparing a meal damages and destroys the power of the food, even food
the individual considers to be “fresh.”
• Commercial practices used to supply food from farms to supermarkets are
overwhelmingly destructive. Produce is often harvested before it is ripe, stored
for long periods of time and subjected to harmful methods to ripen or color it
artificially for presentation in the “fresh” produce section of the supermarket. Some of this produce has lost nearly all of certain vitamins and minerals by the
time it rolls down the supermarket checkout lines, let alone by the time we eat
it. • The way we eat our foods—even how we chew—often prevents us from
realizing the best nutrition, even from good diets. We also eat the wrong
combinations of foods, which interfere with effective digestion. • Most of the vitamin and mineral supplements sold today are of poor quality
and not worth what you pay for them. They do not provide us with the nutrients
we think we are buying. Starvation on a Full StomachAccording to the 
State of the World 2000 
report from the Worldwatch Institute,
the world is in the midst of a nutrition crisis. In the developed countries, 1.2 billion
people, including most Americans, are now “starving” and undernourished because
they are overfed with too much of the wrong foods. The average American diet does
not support the biological needs of human cells. We try to achieve the impossible:
We try to maintain health while eating a diet that cannot provide health. Although
our stomachs may be full (and our bellies are fat), malnutrition is our leading cause
of disease. Ultimately, any level of malnutrition creates susceptibility to disease. However,
when we suffer health problems as a result of poor nutrition, almost always we
blame our illnesses on aging or on faulty genes rather than on its true cause. We are, indeed, what we eat. That cliché should guide all choices we make about
the foods we consume. The average person, however, is poorly informed and
confused about what to eat, how to eat and what to avoid. Misinformation tossed
about by food manufacturers and even by physicians overwhelms the consumer. Few
people truly understand how food helps or fails to keep them healthy. Food manufacturers nearly always favor qualities such as shelf life, taste,
appearance and marketability over nutrition and health. Physicians, who typically
lack nutrition education themselves, usually tell us that a standard diet gives us all
the nutrition we need. With such misinformation, we tend to make irrational and
harmful decisions. A diet that focuses on anything other than meeting the nutritional
needs of cells allows your body to get sick. The four worst food choices, comprising the bulk of the average American diet and
disastrous to the health of our population are:
1. sugar
2. white flour
3. processed oils
4. milk products
Consuming these foods, especially as a large part of the diet and over time, is
virtually guaranteed to cause disease. They provide little nutrition and are toxic as
well. If every American were to stop eating these “foods,” our epidemic of chronic
diseases would decline dramatically. Problematic in their own right, the real harm
caused by these four food failures comes from the fact that we eat them repeatedly,
day by day, meal by meal. As highly as we might think of ourselves, on a physical level we are nothing more
than an organized mass of about 75 trillion cells, all constantly demanding nutrients. If we consistently choose the Big Four—sugar, white flour, processed oils, milk
products or foods containing these as ingredients—we cannot hope to meet the needs
of our hungry cells. Every single time you choose an organic, fresh, unprocessed
food instead of one of the Big Four, you are doing your cells (and yourself) a greatservice. Let us have a closer look at the Big Four. Sugar Wreaks Havoc
If you make only one change in your diet, let it be to eliminate or at least reduce
your intake of sugar. People in our society eat an enormous amount of sugar— probably far more than
you realize. As is often the case, our perspective is the real problem; we are so
familiar with sugar that we do not think of it as a serious health threat. Furthermore,
because in one form or another sugar is contained in an enormous number of
processed foods, it is almost impossible to avoid. Sugar even in small amounts is detrimental. Just two teaspoons of sugar (far less
than a typical soft drink or bowl of breakfast cereal) has a significant hormonal and
nutritional impact for several hours, throwing the body out of balance and into a
state of biochemical chaos. If you eat sugar morning, noon and night (as many
people do), your body remains in chaos all day, every day. In this state of chaos your
body constantly tries to restore its balance but never quite succeeds. Sugar is so
damaging to body chemistry that, in his 2000 book, 
Fit for Life: A New Beginning,
Harvey Diamond calls refined sugar “a deadly, virulent poison.”
During many thousands of years of human evolution, our ancestors survived fine
without any sugar other than sugars naturally occurring in wild fruits and berries. Refined sugar is a comparatively recent invention, and only very recently has it
become a dietary staple. In 1750, when it was first introduced to North America,
sugar was a rare and expensive commodity, and even in 1900 the average person ate
only 10 pounds of sugar per year. By 1985, sugar consumption had risen to 124
pounds per year, and by the year 2000 the average American ate a whopping 160
pounds of sugar per year! Most of us cannot comprehend eating this much sugar
because we fail to realize that it is in almost every type of processed food. The
average American now consumes about one quarter of his or her calories from sugar,
and many children receive almost half of their calories from sugar. All the calories from sugar are empty calories, containing virtually none of the
nutrients that your cells need so desperately. Furthermore, sugar is an antinutrient;
eating sugar drains nutrients from your body. Certain nutrients (which are present in
raw sugarcane but not in refined sugar) are needed for you to metabolize the sugar. Your body must obtain these nutrients from somewhere, and because they are not in
the sugar they are robbed from your own tissues—thereby depleting your health. Sugar consumption contributes not only to the more obvious health problems such
as diabetes and tooth decay, but also to heart disease, osteoporosis and immune
dysfunction. If you want to avoid colds or if someone in your family is “coming
down with a cold,” eliminate sugar. Our society constantly worries about the relationship between high-cholesterolanimal products and heart disease, yet sugar is a more serious cause. A study by A.
M. Cohen, M.D., published in a 1961 issue of the medical journal 
Lancet, 
reports
that Jews from Yemen were noted to have very little heart disease, even though the
diet in Yemen is typically high in animal fat. When these Jews moved to Israel,
where a lot of sugar is common in the diet, rates of heart disease increased
dramatically. Being an antinutrient, sugar also causes calcium to be lost in the urine, forcing the
body to remove calcium from the bones in order to keep the blood calcium levels
within normal limits. By taking the calcium out of your bones, eating sugar
contributes to osteoporosis. People concerned about or already suffering from
osteoporosis should eliminate sugar from their diet. Eating sugar causes deficiencies of a number of minerals, including calcium,
chromium, magnesium and zinc. When you do not have enough minerals, your body
has difficulty producing sufficient digestive enzymes needed for good digestion. Undigested food particles can enter into your bloodstream, creating serious
problems such as allergies and immune-deficiency diseases. This is why foods
consumed with sugar (such as wheat, corn, milk and eggs) become the most common
allergens. If you enjoy your foods and do not want to become allergic to them, learn
to avoid combining them with sugar. In this modern age of AIDS, autoimmune and other immune system diseases,
sugar creates special problems. Sugar damages the cells of our immune system,
creating susceptibility to colds, flu and other immune-related diseases. Sugar also
plays a crucial role in the development of diabetes. The mechanisms for controlling
blood sugar become faulty when high levels of sugar are present in the diet. Sugar
also causes a calcium/phosphorous imbalance, which makes the body less capable of
breaking proteins down into the amino acids that are required to make essential body
chemicals. Even traditional doctors acknowledge that sugar causes tooth decay. Historically, natives who had little exposure to the civilized world and refined sugar
had almost no tooth decay. Sugar is bad enough by itself, but also it is a dangerous partner. You should
especially avoid combining sugar with protein (such as a sweet dessert after a steak
dinner, or orange juice with eggs in the morning). In combination, they react and
form damaging compounds called AGEs (advanced glycation end products). AGEs
may even form within your foods before you eat them, if sugar and protein are
cooked together (such as baked goods containing eggs and sugar, or a ham baked
with brown sugar on top). These AGEs are known to promote heart disease, high
blood pressure, cataracts and arthritis. Eating refined sugar is destructive to human health because it causes vitamins,
minerals and hormones to become imbalanced, which throws the body into
biochemical chaos for several hours. The body, desperately scrambling to rightitself, depletes itself of vital nutrients. The most important and universal dietary
recommendation I can make to everyone is to cut as much sugar (and foods made
with sugar) from their diet as possible. Those children who are consuming up to half
their calories as sugar become sitting ducks for infections and future problems such
as diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, arthritis and heart disease. Eating sugar is death by
installment. White Flour: Quick, Inexpensive and Destructive
Almost all bread, pasta and baked goods are made of white flour—an easy-to-use,
easy-to-store, highly processed derivative of what was once a wheat grain. Wheat is
a good and nutritious food, but by the time wheat gets ground up and processed into
white flour, it bears little resemblance (physically or nutritionally) to wheat. White
flour contains little nutrition, is toxic and is an antinutrient (like sugar). Yet the
average American consumes more than two hundred pounds of white flour every
year. Almost all of the nutrients once contained in wheat are lost in the process of
creating white flour (including 60 percent of the calcium, 77 percent of the
magnesium, 78 percent of the zinc, 89 percent of the cobalt, 98 percent of the
vitamin E, 80 percent of vitamins B
1 
and B
3
, and 75 percent of the folic acid). Also
lost are the essential fatty acids and fiber. Worse still, many nutrients are needed in
order for your body to metabolize the flour for energy. Because the flour does not
contain those nutrients, your body is robbed of the nutrients, similar to what happens
when you eat sugar. In 1941, severe nutritional problems prompted our government to pass legislation
requiring that certain nutrients be added back to the flour. “Enriched flour” was
born. White flour has lost more than twenty-five known nutrients, a handful are
added back, yet we still call flour “enriched” (instead of, perhaps, “impoverished”). We did not have nutritional deficiency in mind when we started making white
flour. We made it because it does not spoil; it keeps practically forever, which
makes white flour an ideal food to feed people in big cities. However, the
malnutrition problem with flour is serious—our bellies are filled in the form of
“hearty” pastas and breads, but all those empty calories do not even come close to
fulfilling our needs for nutrients, thus contributing to deficiency. Worse, flour also contributes to the other cause of disease, toxicity. White flour
contains almost no fiber, which is essential for proper bowel movements and toxin
removal. Eating too much flour (and not enough fiber) is associated with
constipation, hemorrhoids, colitis and rectal cancer. Avoiding white flour is not easy because it is in virtually all breads, pastas, cakes,
cookies, crackers, breakfast cereals, pizzas and pastries. But when you realize thatflour causes disease, cutting down on the refined flour products you consume is
worth the effort. A plate of pasta with vegetables can no longer be considered a good
meal. The vegetables are good, but the pasta is not; choose whole grains or beans
instead. The real health threat from white flour comes not from any single meal, but
because we eat so much of it—one or more meals a day, every day. We also need to
keep in mind that many other grains frequently are refined (such as those in “multi-
grain” breads and cereals) and are reduced to little more than empty calories. Any
grain that is finely ground and “stripped” of fiber and other nutrients is a poor
nutritional choice because essential nutrients have been lost, which most people do
not realize. I cannot tell you how many times I have talked to people who proudly
describe their “healthy, whole-grain diets”—diets made of whole-wheat bread,
rolled oats, granola, multigrain cereals. All of these are processed, make-believe
foods. Eating processed foods of any kind is fundamentally different from and
nutritionally inferior to eating whole, unprocessed foods. On the subject of food processing, one type of grain processing is of special
concern: puffed grains. The high heat and pressure used in the puffing process alters
the molecular structure of proteins in the grains, making them toxic enough to kill
laboratory animals. Absolutely avoid puffed wheat, puffed millet and puffed rice
(including rice cakes), and any other puffed grains. This warning does not include
popcorn, which is not subjected to such high temperatures and pressures. In his
book, 
Fighting the Food Giants, 
Paul Stitt reported an experiment in which rats were
fed either whole wheat or puffed wheat. The rats eating the whole wheat lived over a
year while the rats eating puffed wheat died within two weeks. To avoid health problems created by processed grains, choose whole grains such
as millet, oats, quinoa, spelt, barley, amaranth, teff, kamut and brown rice. Many
people do not realize that white rice is also a processed grain and, therefore, a poor
food choice. Buckwheat, not strictly a grain, can be cooked like whole grains. Organic whole grains are readily available at health food stores. Cook grains in a pot
of water as you would cook rice. A rice-cooker will also work. In the real world,
often we are forced to make less than ideal choices. At the very least, choose
minimally processed whole grains (such as whole-wheat flour or oatmeal) instead of
highly refined and stripped grains, such as white flour, white rice and pasta made
from white flour. Misleading Choices
When I told Elizabeth, the woman I introduced you to at the start of this chapter,
that if she wanted to get well and stay well she would have to eliminate sugar from
her diet, she replied, “I don’t eat any sugar,” going on to explain that she rarely
added 
sugar to anything. What she meant was, she rarely took white sugar out of thesugar bowl and added it to her foods and beverages. She was not considering the
massive amounts of sugar already present in her diet from foods as mundane as
ketchup, breakfast cereal, dinner rolls, soup, salad dressing, bottled fruit juices and
soft drinks, not to mention chocolates, ice cream, cookies, pies, cakes, snack foods
and pancake syrup. Elizabeth was quite surprised when I added up all the sugar she
was consuming. Elizabeth and I also talked about white flour. She did not realize that most of the
starches she was eating (including pastas, breads and breakfast cereals) were made
from white flour and other processed grains. Thinking about what she should
perhaps be eating instead, she made another mistake: Elizabeth proudly showed me a
package of the “healthy” multigrain bread she had purchased. I shook my head as I
read the ingredient list and explained to her that such bread is not healthy. First,
bread is a highly processed food, and this bread’s number-one ingredient was
unbleached flour, a highly processed flour that is only marginally better than white
flour (it has not undergone the final bleaching process). This supposedly “healthy”
bread also contained a health-damaging sugar (corn syrup), hydrogenated oils and
toxic preservatives. Elizabeth had been misled into believing this bread was a healthy food—perhaps
because of the false advertising on the package, claiming it to be “healthy,” and the
fact that she had purchased it in a health food store. Many people have a difficult
time learning how to discern good foods from bad ones. The simplest explanation is
to think of the concepts of 
real foods 
and 
make-believe foods. The more a food is
changed from the way nature would normally provide it, the more make-believe it
becomes. Some Truths about Processed Fats and Oils
A widespread misperception in America today is that to be healthy we must eat a
low-cholesterol, low-fat or nonfat diet. Rather, you need fats and oils, but they must
be the right kinds of fats and oils, not the processed fats and oils so prevalent in our
diets today. Despite our society’s obsession with and fears about fats and oils, these
nutrients are an incredibly important part of a healthy diet. Each of the trillions of cells in your body is surrounded by a permeable cell
membrane. Fats and oils are the primary building materials used to create those cell
membranes. Cell membranes are critically important because all the nutrients your
cells need and all the toxic waste products they must eliminate need to pass through
it. If you eat the right kinds of fats and oils, your cell membranes properly regulate
the passage of materials; eating the wrong kinds causes your cell membranes to
work against you. When your cell membranes are not working correctly, your cells
will malfunction, which can manifest into just about any disease you can imagine. Essential fatty acids 
is the term used to describe the “right kind” of fats and oils.They are essential because the body needs them but cannot make them, so we must
obtain them from food. These essential fatty acid molecules have a specific shape
that is critical to the way they work in forming cell membranes—like bricks that fit
perfectly together to build cell walls. (Chemists use the term cis-fatty acids to
describe the natural, healthy shape of essential fatty acid molecules.) When oils are heated above 392°F (as most supermarket oils are), the cis-fatty
acid molecules change shape, turning into a different and toxic category of fats
called trans-fats. The shape of trans-fats does not work properly for building cell
membranes. These improperly shaped “bricks” build a cell wall with holes it. Cell
membranes constructed from trans-fats become leaky (allowing substances inside
cells to leak out, and vice versa) and brittle (like the shell of an egg, rather than the
elasticity of a balloon). If cells throughout your body are leaky and brittle, you have
a serious problem. Because of the way oils are processed, trans-fats (and other toxins) are found in
virtually all oils sold in supermarkets and health food stores, including canola, corn,
safflower, sunflower, cottonseed and soybean oils, along with food products
containing hydrogenated oils, like margarine and vegetable shortenings. Consider
the vast numbers of products made with these toxic oils, such as salad dressings,
breakfast cereals, crackers, chocolates, candy, potato chips and fried foods such as
french fries. The solution? Eat essential (good) fats and avoid hydrogenated and
other (bad) trans-fats. More chemistry that is vital to your health: The two most important essential fatty
acids are linoleic acid (omega-6 fatty acids) and linolenic acid (omega-3 fatty
acids). For good health, these fatty acids must be consumed in sufficient amounts
and in the correct balance with each other. It has been estimated, however, that 60
percent of our population gets too much omega-6s and that up to 95 percent gets too
little omega-3s; this imbalance causes disease. Avoid processed, supermarket oils
and food products containing them, which perpetuate this imbalance, and
supplement with oils combining a healthy balance. Pioneers in medical research are curing a number of chronic problems (such as
depression, heart disease and cancer) by giving their patients the right kinds of fats
and oils. But most people have no idea that the bad fats and oils damage cell
membranes and therefore cause disease, which explains why society at large is not
demanding alternatives. As with many of our modern foods, we created technologies that are solely
designed to produce the highest amount of oils using the smallest amount of raw
materials (seeds, beans and grains) in the shortest period of time with maximum
shelf life. Time and money are the driving forces, not health and nutrition. Today,
oils are extracted using huge, powerful presses that generate a lot of heat, which, in
the presence of oxygen, oxidizes oils, making them rancid and toxic. Yet these now-toxic oils can still be labeled as “cold-pressed” because no heat was added during the
pressing process; the heat is an unintentional result of the high-pressure extraction
process. This is why cold-pressed is a meaningless term and is not useful for you in
determining what to eat and what to avoid. Harsh solvents are used to extract oils,
which remain in the oil as a residue. These solvents also destroy nutrients in the oils. In addition, processed oils are typically bleached and deodorized— destroying more
nutrients and creating toxins. To put healthful oils in your diet, eat high-quality olive oil and flaxseed oil. Also,
beneficial fatty acids can be found in organic, fresh, unprocessed food in its natural
state, such as raw seeds, raw nuts and avocados. High-quality eggs, meat and fish are
also good sources of fatty acids. Keep in mind, though, that essential fatty acids are
readily damaged by heat. Use the minimum heat necessary to cook these foods. Supplement your diet with a high-quality essential fatty acid supplement. To avoid
chronic disease and slow down the aging process, dietary supplementation of
essential fatty acids (from flaxseed oil, for example) is necessary; deriving enough
of the right fats and oils from the foods that are available today is difficult. Check your kitchen and refrigerator shelves. Discard your processed oils,
particularly hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils (margarine, vegetable
shortening, etc. ), and products made with those oils, including many baked goods,
crackers, chips, peanut butter and nondairy creamer. Instead, use primarily high-
quality olive oil, organic butter or ghee, and essential fatty acid supplements (see
appendix C for suggestions). Myths About Milk
The final failure food on my Big Four list is one that is usually touted as
necessary to good health for adults and children: milk products. Milk’s reputation as
a highly nutritious food is undeserved; in reality, modern milk is a highly toxic and
allergenic make-believe food. The United States may produce a lot of milk, and the
dairy boards may try to convince us to drink lots of milk, but milk does not do a
body good. According to pediatrician Russell Bunai, M.D., in a 1994 issue of 
Natural Health,
the one single change to the U.S. diet that could provide the greatest health benefits
is the elimination of milk products. In the 1992 edition of his book 
Don’t Drink Your
Milk, 
Dr. Frank Oski, former director of the Department of Pediatrics at Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, said, “We should all stop drinking milk. . . . It was designed for calves, not for humans.” This claim is not what your mother told
you (because she herself was misled), and it is not what the dairy industry would
have you believe, but it is true. The idea that milk is a necessary and healthy part of
the human diet is a myth. As I lecture across the country, recommending (among
other things) that people not drink milk, I am always amazed at how many timespeople will call me months later to say that they took my advice, stopped consuming
dairy products, and their health problems disappeared. Most of the world’s population (about 70 percent) does not drink milk or consume
other dairy products (including cheese, yogurt, ice cream and sour cream), for good
reasons. Mother’s milk is a perfect food—for infants, not for adults. In nature, no
animal drinks milk after weaning, nor does any species drink the milk of another
species. Granted, we humans have managed to domesticate our livestock, but this
accomplishment does not change the fact that each species (and their milk) is
unique. Feeding elephant milk to cats, mouse milk to giraffes or cow milk to humans
is not a good idea. Cow milk, especially in the forms found in your supermarket, is not a good food. Cow milk contains proteins and fats that are difficult for humans to digest, and cow
milk does not supply nearly the amount of calcium that its reputation suggests. Also,
statistics from the World Health Organization show that the countries consuming the
most milk products also have the highest rates of osteoporosis, breast cancer,
allergies and diabetes. Actually milk can deplete nutrients from our bodies—acting as an antinutrient,
just like sugar and white flour. Metabolizing some of the fats in milk (particularly
when the milk is pasteurized, and virtually all of it is) uses up essential fatty acids,
one of our most serious nutritional deficiencies. For all these reasons, foods
containing pasteurized milkfats are at the top of the list of “foods to be avoided.”
Additionally, if pasteurized milkfats are not properly metabolized (because of an
essential fatty acid deficiency, which most Americans have), then the fat may be
deposited in arteries, contributing to cardiovascular diseases. A prime factor contributing to the health problems caused by milk is
pasteurization (heating), which both destroys nutrients and creates toxins, thereby
contributing to each of the two causes of disease. Animals fed pasteurized milk
exhibit poor skeletal development, weak bones, osteoporosis and tooth decay. Calves
fed raw milk remain healthy, but calves fed pasteurized milk typically die within
eight weeks! If a calf cannot benefit from pasteurized milk, how can a human? The Rest of the Story
Upon hearing that they should not drink milk, people invariably ask, “How will I
be able to get enough calcium if I don’t drink milk?” My response is, “Where does a
cow, a horse, or an elephant get its calcium?” They get it from plants, which are rich
in all kinds of minerals—including calcium. Dark green vegetables such as broccoli,
chard and kale are rich sources of absorbable calcium. Cow milk is also rich in calcium, containing about 1,200 mg of calcium per quart
while human milk contains about 300 mg. However, an infant absorbs far more
calcium from a quart of human milk than from a quart of cow milk, even thoughhuman milk contains less calcium. Cow milk contains a lot of phosphorous, which
prevents calcium absorption. Also, cow milk is low in magnesium, which humans
need in order to utilize calcium. In short, your body is not able to use the large
amount of calcium present in cow milk. You do not use the calcium, so instead it can
build up and form kidney stones, bone spurs, gout and atherosclerotic plaque. Milk robs calcium from bones. The protein in cow milk metabolizes to strong
acids, which can be harmful, so instead the body uses the calcium to neutralize those
acids—thereby robbing your bones and other tissues in the process. The United
States, with only 4 percent of the world’s population, consumes more dairy foods
than the other 96 percent combined. If milk is really good for our bones, then we
should have the strongest bones in the world. Instead, we have one of the highest
osteoporosis rates in the world. We are not alone; all other countries with high dairy
consumption also have high levels of osteoporosis. A large percentage of the population is allergic to milk and dairy products,
regardless of whether they realize it. Allergic reactions tax the immune system and
lower resistance to infections and diseases. Milk allergies are the primary cause of
ear infections in children. Given that constant allergic responses shorten your life
(and constant use of allergy medications will, too), the answer is to avoid things you
are allergic to in the first place. For most people, this means avoiding milk products. According to Dr. Oski, “At least 50 percent of all children are allergic to dairy.”
Milk is harmful to young children for another reason: It may trigger childhood
diabetes in genetically susceptible children. More recently, milk has been linked to
multiple sclerosis. Milk also causes localized inflammations in an infant’s intestines
and can result in low-level bleeding and iron-deficiency anemia. Because of the
problems with allergies, anemia and diabetes, in 1992 the American Academy of
Pediatrics recommended that cow milk not be given to babies during their first year
of life because it damages health. Yet many mothers are not heeding this advice and
still feed their children milk, thinking it is healthy. In September 1992, Benjamin
Spock, M.D., (the famous “baby doctor”) lent his voice to the growing chorus
warning against the dangers of cow’s milk, urging parents to use breast milk
exclusively. Breast milk, yes; cow’s milk, no. Infants should be breast-fed for at
least one, and preferably for two to three years. After that, no milk should be
consumed. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors nursed their young for an average of three years, as
compared to modern Americans, who nurse for an average of only three months. Introduction of infant feeding formulas has had a negative effect on children’s
health. Breast-fed infants are less likely to develop inflammatory bowel disease
when they become adults than bottle-fed infants. Adults who were breast-fed as
infants develop fewer allergies throughout life (even among people whose parents
had a history of allergies).Coffee: A Boost with a Big Price
In addition to the Big Four failures, one more dietary habit is worth mentioning
because of its huge negative impact on health: drinking coffee. Coffee is popular
because our society chronically suffers low energy and fatigue. The stimulating
effects of coffee are used “to get through the day,” and they create dependency. The
caffeine does not create or sustain long-term energy; it just hypes the system by
overstimulating the adrenal glands, which ultimately carries a long-term price. Caffeine increases the amount of sugar in the blood and provides an energy lift, but
it also throws body chemistry out of balance. By doing so, coffee damages health in many ways. Coffee is acidic and
contributes to overacidity in the American diet, changing the pH of our cells (and
requiring calcium to be robbed from tissues to neutralize the acidity). A number of
studies have linked caffeine to urinary calcium loss, which contributes to
osteoporosis, hip fractures and death. One of those studies, printed in a January 1994 issue of the 
Journal of the
American Medical Association, 
found that women who drank two cups of coffee per
day increased their risk of hip fracture by 69 percent. Coffee has also been linked to
cancer. Coffee that is roasted forms a compound called 3,4-benzopyrene, a powerful
carcinogen; an average cup of coffee contains 500 micrograms of known
carcinogens. In 1981, professor Brian MacMahon of the Harvard School of Public
Health concluded that coffee drinking was the cause of 50 percent of all pancreatic
cancer, and that drinking three cups a day increased the risk of pancreatic cancer
threefold. Why we drink so much coffee is easy to understand. We eat the Big Four all the
time, which causes our cells to function poorly and produce low energy levels. Then,
we have deadlines to meet and schedules to keep, and coffee seems the only means
to make it happen. Eat real food and eliminate “make-believe” food, and you may
find that your “need” for coffee declines. Nutrition Is Not in the Eyes 
of the Beholder
Make-believe food lacks sufficient nutrients because it is highly processed,
heavily cooked or commercially farmed. Yet because we grew up eating these foods,
we are completely accustomed to them. Within my lifetime, the practice of eating more make-believe foods instead of
organic, fresh, unprocessed foods has increased enormously. For most of my life I
lived in areas never more than twenty miles from an apple farm where, during
harvest season, I could purchase fresh apples. Today, finding fresh apples isdifficult, because most that are for sale have been in long-term storage since
harvesting. Produce such as apples, cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes are waxed to
prevent loss of moisture during long-term storage; this wax is not good for you and
often seals in toxic pesticide and fungicide residues as well. Modern eggs are another example of make-believe food. A real egg contains a
fatty acid called DHA (docosahexanoic acid), a nutrient that is a critical building
component for cells in brain and eye tissue. A real egg supplies an average of 200 to
400 milligrams of DHA. Make-believe supermarket eggs contain an average of only
18 milligrams. Without adequate DHA, the body uses whatever substitute is
available to build those cells, causing them to malfunction. DHA is sadly lacking in
our modern diets, causing an epidemic of brain dysfunction, including depression,
mood disorders, attention deficit disorder and a host of other medical problems. Similarly, a real egg contains ten times the vitamin E of a supermarket egg. To make
matters worse, make-believe eggs are loaded with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics
and a host of other toxins. We have few real eggs because we have few real chickens. Real chickens must be
raised outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, eating their natural diet of bugs,
worms, pigweed, dandelions and other living foods. Most of today’s chickens are
cage reared, confined in factories where they do not obtain the benefits of exercise
or sunlight and are fed nutritionally deficient, processed chicken feed. Neither the
meat nor the eggs of these unhealthy animals support healthy human life. Commercial chickens are fed an incredibly deficient and toxic diet. They are so
malnourished and unhealthy that they must be fed a lifetime of antibiotics and other
drugs to keep them alive. Ninety percent of commercial chickens have cancer at the
time of their slaughter. If these chickens’ cells are so malnourished and unhealthy,
how can you expect your cells to be healthy when you eat their meat and eggs? Pork is no different. Pigs are fed a diet of recycled waste, filled with toxins, and
more than 80 percent have pneumonia at their time of slaughter. Likewise with beef,
cattle fattened in feed lots are so malnourished and sick that they require a variety of
drugs just to keep them alive.
Never_Be_Sick_Again_by_Raymond_Francis.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Cells are created and maintained by extremely complex actions and interactions,
but nature takes care of that complexity. Your job is rather simple: Make certain that
your cells obtain what they need. Choosing health means learning how to supply
your cells with what they need while keeping them free of what they don’t need. Cells have great powers to take care of themselves and to repair themselves—to stay
healthy—unless they are overwhelmed by poor diets, unhealthy habits or
environmental hazards. Your daily choices determine whether your cells stay healthy
or get sick. We are ready to begin our journey through the cells of your body. Picture that we
have traveled to the largest industrial park you can imagine. Around the park is a
security wall designed to keep out intruders, to prevent the loss of essential
materials, and to regulate the passage of materials in and out of the park. Inside the
park are powerhouses designed to make the energy necessary to keep the park
working. These powerhouses, in turn, require fuel, oxygen and other essentials on a
round-the-clock basis in order to do their jobs. Also inside the park are different factories and manufacturing plants that require a
continuous supply of energy and raw materials in order to meet their daily quota offinished products. Coordinating all these activities are computer and communication
systems that regulate the delivery of raw materials and the removal of wastes, as
well as the production, storage and distribution of finished products. All of these
systems are based upon a set of design blueprints containing all the information
necessary to build a new park. You have just toured the human cell. Each cell has a wall— the membrane—
whose purpose is to keep out toxins, bacteria, viruses and other harmful substances,
while still allowing nutrients to reach inside where they are needed. The membrane
also prevents healthy and necessary substances from leaking out of the cell, while
still allowing waste products to be excreted. Powerhouses in the cell create energy
and manufacturing plants make the finished products your body needs, such as
neurotransmitters, hormones and antibodies. Your cells also have electrical and
communication systems that help to keep everything working in balance. Cells have
many important jobs to perform during every second of every day; anything that
interferes with these tasks is a threat to health. Every day hundreds of billions of cells need to be replaced. Building a new cell
requires a long list of raw materials, similar to building a new car or a computer. If
even one part is missing, the product will be defective, and if many parts are
missing, malfunction is guaranteed. As each new cell is created, you are choosing
either health or disease, depending on whether the new cells you are building are
healthy or not. You make this choice when you order at a fast-food drive-up window, when you
stay up too late, when you spray cleaning products around your house, when you take
your daily vitamin supplement or when you choose to take no supplements. Making
a single bad choice here and there is generally not a problem, but when you
consistently make bad choices, daily living can wear down your tissues faster than
they can be repaired or replaced. Building and Operating Healthy Cells
To be healthy, each day old cells must be replaced with new ones and each must
perform all of its intended functions. Do you know what raw materials you need to
build healthy cells. Are you eating the right foods—foods whose calories are packed
with the building blocks required to make healthy new cells. Does anyone really
believe it is possible to build healthy cells from coffee, donuts, white bread, pasta,
potato chips, french fries and ice cream. How many of the raw materials necessary
to build and operate healthy cells do these foods contain. The answer is not many,
which is one reason that we have so much disease. A chronic shortage of vitamins, minerals, water, oxygen or other nutrients causes
your cells to malfunction. You may be unaware this malfunction is happening,particularly at the early stages, but a chronic shortage of even one nutrient
eventually makes you sick. When shortages are chronic, the body stops repairing and
self-regulating; cells then deteriorate into a diseased state or die. Building healthy cells starts in a mother’s womb. If an embryo suffers from a
shortage of building materials or the presence of toxins, a child born with birth
defects may be the result. During pregnancy, certain parts of the fetus are being
constructed during specific weeks—such as the brain and nervous system, the
circulatory system and the digestive system. If essential raw materials are
unavailable at that crucial time or toxins are present, any of these systems can be
affected, perhaps manifested as heart defects, digestive problems, lower I. Q. ,
attention deficit disorders and so on. We’re not talking about genetic defects here,
but defects that result from building a baby in an unhealthy environment. In extreme
situations, the construction process simply shuts down and the fetus is naturally
aborted—an ever-increasing occurrence in our society. A newborn baby’s health is the product of the genetic material from the parents
and 
the supply of building materials and presence of toxins (from the mother) during
gestation. People wrongly assume that genetics by itself explains the health or
disease of their child. Congenital defects (those present at birth) are not necessarily
the result of genetics. For example, the December 2001 issue of 
Lancet 
reported a
study regarding supplemental vitamins taken during pregnancy. Mothers who had
taken both folic acid and iron supplements during pregnancy gave birth to children
who were 60 percent less likely to develop the most common form of childhood
leukemia. Eating right is especially important for expecting moms. Like any disease,
leukemia doesn’t “just happen. ” The quality of the cells, tissues and systems a baby
is born with has a lifelong effect. Whether caused by nutritional deficiency or toxic exposure, trouble can begin
when your cell factories are supposed to be making something but are not making
enough or have shut down. If cell factories are unable to make sufficient antibodies,
we become susceptible to infections. When cell factories cannot make sufficient
neurotransmitters, mental function suffers. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals
generated by nerve cells that send information throughout the nervous system,
allowing us to think, learn and remember. ) When unable to make sufficient
hormones, communications and self-regulation are disrupted. Hormones are chemicals produced by specialized cells that travel through the
blood and lymph systems to bring messages to other parts of the body. Blood sugar
level, for instance, is balanced primarily by two hormones, both produced by
specialized cells in the pancreas. Although each cell is a living entity unto itself, bodily systems can only be
regulated and controlled when cells are able to communicate effectively with each
other. Impaired cellular communications is one of the most basic commondenominators of disease, no matter how the disease happened or what it is called. Cellular communication and feedback systems regulate everything from body
temperature to immunity to movement. When these systems break down gradually,
as they often do in disease, we may not notice. We are more familiar with sudden
and severe breakdowns in bodily communication, such as spinal injuries that cause
paralysis. We fail to recognize how subtle communication breakdowns precipitate
chronic and terminal health problems. Each time you order at a restaurant, each time you reach into your cabinet for
cooking oils, each time you plan your day’s meals, you are basically deciding
whether you will build strong cells or weak ones. It really is that simple. The choice
is yours to make. Are you going to maintain your body or let it fall apart. Toxins Shut Systems Down
A variety of toxic chemicals and metals can damage cells. Like grains of sand,
toxins can jam cellular machinery and even cause entire cell factories or
powerhouses to shut down. Many toxins disable enzymes, which are necessary for the chemical reactions that
make our lives possible. The number of chemical reactions required to make life
possible is astonishing; in a cell, an estimated 6 trillion such reactions take place
every second. Enzymes make these reactions possible. About two thousand kinds of
enzymes have been identified, and they are manufactured by our cells to accomplish
a variety of tasks. Enzymes act as little machines, putting things together or taking
them apart at amazingly high speed. Without functioning enzymes, cell factories and
assembly lines shut down. The kind of enzymes a particular cell manufactures distinguishes and determines
what kind of cell it is (for example, a nerve cell or a muscle cell). Enzymes serve a
variety of purposes and must be constructed with many different nutrients. Enzymes
contain essential mineral atoms, such as zinc, magnesium, iron and chromium. If
these building materials are not present in sufficient quantity, enzyme function (and
therefore cell function) is impaired. Take zinc, for example. The retina contains
enzymes constructed with zinc and is a zinc-rich tissue. If you do not have enough
zinc in your diet, your retina and other zinc-rich tissues, such as the prostate, will be
impaired before obvious effects are noticed elsewhere in the body. Night blindness
and malfunctioning prostates are common symptoms of zinc deficiency. However, even if dietary zinc is adequate, but this nutrient is replaced in the
enzyme by a toxic metal—such as mercury, arsenic, cadmium or lead—the presence
of this toxin disables the enzyme and causes disease. Toxic heavy metals are a prime
example of how toxins can cause cellular malfunction, and our bodies contain
hundreds of times more toxic metals than they did in our ancestors a century ago. Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that we are commonly exposed to from dental work
—amalgam fillings contain mercury. Municipal water supplies contain toxins such
as aluminum, fluoride and arsenic. Even in trace amounts, these toxins can
deactivate enzymes and impair vital bodily systems. They can cause our systems to
shut down. They must be avoided. Building and using enzymes properly is an essential part of good health, as
enzyme dysfunction is a common denominator of disease. Maintaining proper
enzyme balance is one reason to eat fresh organic foods. Organic produce is richer in
the vitamins and minerals that enable us to build enzymes and coenzymes, and it is
less toxic, too. Enzyme function can also be enhanced with high-quality dietary
supplements. The First Line of Defense
A cell’s first line of defense against disease is the cell membrane, the security
wall that surrounds the cell and carries out many important functions. Healthy
membranes, built from appropriate materials, protect cells from harmful invaders—
including viruses. Malfunctioning membranes allow bacteria, viruses, toxins and
other harmful substances to damage cells. The presence of poorly constructed cell
membranes formed from poor diets is one of the biggest reasons that almost all
Americans get sick. The cell membrane controls everything that goes into and out of a cell. Making
certain that only the right things go in and out of the cell is a critical and complex
task that only can be accomplished when the cell membrane is constructed correctly. The membranes that surround each of the trillions of cells in your body are made
mostly of fats and oils. Membranes constructed out of the wrong fats and oils do not
function properly, which is a problem for most Americans. For example, diets with
excessive amounts of saturated fats, which are rigid molecules, create rigid cell
membranes that lack necessary elasticity. Catastrophic failures, such as ruptured
blood vessels and torn muscles and tendons, can occur in tissues made from these
rigid cells. Cell membranes are made primarily of fatty molecules called phospholipids. Special kinds of oils called essential fatty acids (EFAs)—omega-3s and omega-6s—
are used to create the phospholipids in cell membranes. These oils are essential
because your body is unable to produce them; these oils must be obtained through
diet. An overwhelming majority —some estimate as much as 90 percent—of the
U. S. population may be deficient in the correct assortment of essential fatty acids. When the correct raw materials are lacking, the body makes cell membranes out of
whatever raw materials are available. These materials include the hydrogenated oils
found in margarine, vegetable shortening, baked goods and breakfast cereals; thesaturated fats from meat and dairy products; and the trans-fatty acids found in
processed salad and cooking oils. Cell membranes built from these inappropriate
fats and oils cause the membrane and the entire cell to malfunction. For example, building a cell membrane from hydrogenated oils impairs the
passage of oxygen into the cell, and oxygen-deficient cells become cancerous. None
of us would build a house with cardboard walls. Why, then, do we build our cell
membranes—our first line of defense against disease—out of junk materials like
margarine, vegetable shortening and supermarket oils. Modern diets fail to supply
adequate amounts of the correct essential fatty acids. I recommend supplementation
with high-quality essential fatty acids and fish oils (see appendix C). Weak and Rusty
To be healthy, cells must be supplied with adequate amounts of antioxidants. Cell
membranes and the factories and powerhouses inside of cells can be damaged from
oxidation via free radicals. Picture how oxidative damage (rust) would cause the
Golden Gate Bridge to disintegrate were it not painted with a protective coating each
year. Currently, our bodies are immersed in a sea of highly reactive chemicals—
such as ozone in urban air and chlorine in tap water—that create oxidative damage
to our bodies. You likely have heard reports about antioxidants (such as vitamins A,
C and E) and how they protect us against free radical damage. Free radicals damage our cells just like rust corrodes metal. Free radicals have
unpaired electrons. Electrons, which travel in pairs, are charged particles orbiting
around the nucleus of atoms. An unpaired electron aggressively seeks a mate, trying
to “grab” an electron from something else, perhaps a molecule that is performing an
important job in one of your cell membranes. Once the electron is grabbed, that
molecule can no longer perform its job properly; furthermore, the molecule now
becomes a free radical itself, aggressively seeking its own electron mate. The
subsequent chain reaction can result in serious cellular damage commonly
associated with aging and disease, unless the body’s tissues are rich with
antioxidants that can stop hazardous chain reactions as soon as they begin. Free radicals are naturally produced as we metabolize oxygen. Free-radical chain
reactions are constantly being produced and stopped inside your body. Cells were
designed to cope with these reactions, but not of the magnitude that is present today. For example, chlorine, a highly oxidizing gas put in municipal tap water, can easily
damage our skin and lungs. Taking a shower in chlorinated water is like stepping
into a chlorine gas chamber—a health hazard of which most people are totally
unaware. We can make choices to protect our cells, but first we need to know the
source of the damage. Today, we expose ourselves to free-radical damage from chemicals to which our
biological ancestors were never exposed. Our modern environment is filled withsubstances that cause free radicals to form, such as ozone, chlorine, pesticides,
tobacco smoke, petroleum byproducts, synthetic perfume and many others. We need
more antioxidant protection than ever, because we are exposed to so many more free
radicals. The problem is that the need for antioxidant nutrients is up while the supply
in our diet is down. To avoid the weak and rusty body—to slow the aging process and keep disease at
bay—the sensible solution is to stop the free-radical damage. The necessities are
simple: a diet rich in antioxidant nutrients along with antioxidant supplements, and
clean food, water and air. None of these ideas are new, but what people don’t
understand is why they are important. If you allow free radicals to damage your cells
—to allow them to become weak and rusty—your body ages faster and becomes
vulnerable to disease. Salt Is Often at Fault
To be healthy, the nutrients in cells must be in proper balance. Upsetting the
natural balance of chemicals inside a cell causes the cell to malfunction, which is
what is happening to the balance of sodium and potassium in our cells. Over the past
one hundred years, our diets have changed dramatically, increasing the amount of
sodium and decreasing the amount of potassium in our diet, thus reversing the
natural balance. Modern food manufacturers add lots of salt (sodium chloride) to
their products, while modern diets do not include enough potassium-rich foods such
as fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes. When our genes were
evolving, human diets contained little sodium and a lot of potassium. For example,
eating an apple provides only 1 mg of sodium, but 310 mg of potassium. Eating a
piece of modern apple pie provides 110 mg of sodium and only 80 mg of potassium,
a drastic change. Salt-rich diets force excess sodium into cells, disturbing the normal and healthy
sodium/potassium balance. Among other problems, excess sodium interferes with
cellular energy production, causing fatigue. Sodium attaches itself strongly to water
molecules, so when more sodium goes into the cells, so does more water. Water
retention elevates blood pressure and causes weight gain. Dietary salt contributes to
an increased incidence of cancer and metastasis, cardiac disease, stroke, kidney
disease, bronchial problems and kidney stones. By avoiding processed and packaged
foods, most of our excess dietary sodium can be eliminated. An Important Litmus Test
Healthy cells must have the correct pH. In addition to the dangerous imbalance of
sodium and potassium, our modern lifestyles and diets have detrimental effects on
another critical balance: the pH of our cells. Commercials commonly tout “pH
balanced” shampoos for our hair, and most of us remember the litmus paper testsfrom our chemistry sets or grade-school experiments—those tiny sheets of paper
that turn pink or blue based on pH. Cells must maintain proper pH balance, and our
food choices affect that balance. The pH is a measurement of acidity or alkalinity. On the pH scale, 7 is neutral; 0
to 7 is acidic, and 7 to 14 is alkaline. The normal pH inside of a cell is about 7. 4,
which is slightly alkaline. Maintaining normal pH in the fluid inside the cell as well
as in other body fluids is critical for keeping body systems functioning normally. Most of the chemical reactions in the body, including the production of energy,
occur most efficiently in an alkaline environment. The enzymes involved in these
reactions are pH sensitive and only function within a narrow pH range; pH level
affects other vital operations, such as the transport of substances through cell
membranes. You can monitor your acid/alkaline levels by using pH paper (see
appendix C). Modern diets often cause cellular pH to drop below 7. 0, into the acidic range. (Cells also can become too alkaline, but excessive acidity is most common. ) A cell
that becomes too acidic is said to have intracellular acidosis. Acidosis, an extremely
serious condition, is one of the common factors present in many manifestations of
disease. The more acidic a cell becomes, the more impaired its function. At very
high acidic levels, the cell will die. Herman Aihara, author of 
Acid and Alkaline,
says that “one of the important causes of cancer— and other degenerative diseases—
is the cumulative effect of the acidic condition of body fluid. ”
How do cells become too acidic. Different foods have different effects on our pH. Ideally, we should consume only foods that maintain proper cellular pH. Instead, we
consume a diet high in foods that have an acidic effect, such as sugar, soft drinks,
white flour (pasta and bread), excessive protein and salt. Consumption of these
foods, which deplete the body of alkaline materials, has skyrocketed over the past
few generations. Because acidosis is such a threat, the body tries to prevent it by using its own
alkaline minerals (such as calcium and magnesium) leached from the bones and
teeth, leading to dental problems and osteoporosis. By contrast, fresh and
unprocessed foods, rich in alkaline minerals, help keep pH within normal limits. For
this reason, among others, most of our calories should come from fresh, unprocessed
vegetables, fruits, beans and whole grains. Concerned about your pH. Measure the pH of your first morning urine before
eating. This test offers an indicator of your cellular pH and can be used to monitor
changes as you work to normalize your pH. First morning urine should be in the
range of 6. 5 to 7. 5. If readings fall below 6. 5, you are too acidic. Occasional readings
above 7. 5 are normal, but consistent readings above 7. 5 are an indication of tissue
breakdown, and a pH over 8. 0 is a serious matter. Fatigue is often reflected in an
acidic pH. Why Am I So Tired. Fatigue is one of the most common complaints made to physicians today. During
the onset of my own illness, the first thing I noticed was fatigue. I simply did not
have the energy I had been accustomed to having. So many people—epidemic
proportions, actually—are tired and lack energy, but they do not know what to do
about it. Indeed, when I told my doctor about my fatigue, he told me it was the result
of aging. In truth, the fatigue had nothing to do with growing older and everything to
do with becoming sicker. All cells require energy to function. Your cellular powerhouses use enzymes to
turn carbohydrates, fatty acids and amino acids into energy the body is able to use. Fatigue occurs because the body’s energy production systems have been impaired. The powerhouses (called 
mitochondria
) may not be receiving sufficient fuel or
oxygen, may have been damaged by free radicals, may have the wrong pH, or may
have their enzymes disabled by toxic chemicals. The high-energy compounds made
by the powerhouses, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate), are made in large
quantities when we sleep, which is one reason that an under-rested person functions
poorly and lacks energy. Don’t Blame Your Parents
Genes are the blueprints for the structure and function of every cell in our bodies. Although we inherit genes from our parents, how we maintain and care for our genes
determines how well our cells work. Over a lifetime, to some degree, genes
deteriorate and mutate naturally, but what we must focus on are man-made free
radicals that accelerate or distort this natural process. Minimizing the damage is
crucial; important steps are to avoid: radiation from medical X rays and other
sources, environmental chemicals, prescription and recreational drugs, alcohol,
tobacco smoke and even char-broiled meat. Minimizing the damage also means
protecting genes with good nutrition—particularly foods containing ample
antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins A, C, E and the mineral selenium. Many people assume that “bad genes” or a family history of disease predestines
them to be sick. In truth, while genetic predispositions do put a person at risk for
disease, what a person chooses to do to protect the health of their cells and genes
plays a more important role in whether or not disease develops. Choices, rather than
genetic inheritance, are the key. We must focus on how we play the game, not the
cards we were dealt; what we eat, what we do and what we are exposed to determines
how healthy we will be. Learning a New Way
Unfortunately, a common medical response to a diseased organ is to remove it
surgically. Before taking such a drastic action, why not give the cells that make up
that organ what they need, keep them free of what they do not need and restore the
organ to health. Modern lifestyles—diets and toxins—create the formulas for cellular malfunction
and disease, yet traditional medical practices ignore them. How often have you, a
friend or a relative consulted a physician and been given a diagnosis or treatment but
were not asked even one question about how you care for or neglect your body. Not
asked even one question about what you eat, what harmful substances invade your
environment or how you live your life in general. More commonly you are asked
about symptoms alone. Traditional medicine does not make us healthy and, worse
yet, can make us sick and promote our death. Drugs, surgeries and other medical
procedures that disregard the causes of disease—not fixing the problems inside the
cells and instead addressing symptoms— can never cure the disease. Disease is not
about “diseases,” it is about cells; diagnoses and treatments should always reflect
this approach. The battle between sickness and health takes place within every cell in your body. Choosing healthy cells means following each of the six pathways in a positive
direction; let us move on to the first of the six: the nutrition pathway. 5
T
HE 
N
UTRITION 
P
ATHWAY
“The well-nourished American is a myth. Despite the high
level of education and the abundance of available food, many
people make poor food choices and are badly nourished. [T]he average human diet, nutritionally unfit for rats, must be
equally unsatisfactory or even more so in meeting human needs. ”
Carl Pfeiffer, M. D. , Ph.
To obtain what they need and keep them free of what they don't need.
What is the primary job of cells?
To stop the chain reactions caused by free radicals and protect the cells from oxidative damage.
What is the primary role of antioxidants in the body?
Sugar, white flour, processed oils, and milk products.
What are the four worst food choices that can cause disease, according to the author?
A chronic shortage of essential nutrients and toxins in the diet.
What is the primary cause of cell malfunction and disease, according to the author?
Plants, such as broccoli, kale, and spinach, not cow's milk.
What is the primary source of calcium for the human body?