Download THE HEALTH FOOD BUSINESS (lecture 11)

THE HEALTH FOOD BUSINESS
Hippocrates
 “let thy food by thy medicine”
 thought physicians needed to know astrology (?)
 flax is good for intestines  laxative and alpha-linolenic acid (omega3)
 Hippocrates diet – Amy Wigmore (thinks we have a limited enzyme store)
Sylvester Graham
 worlds first nutritionist ~ nicknamed Dr. No
 abstinence of alcohol, meat (sexual enhancer), spices (irritants), caffeine (stimulant),
and no doctors (good idea in 1800’s)
 Graham crackers – 1st anti-sex food (he was responsible for graham flour)
Imperial herbal restaurant
 Singapore – tick off ailments you are suffering from
“Natural”
 No legal definition applying to food
 Formulated without additives
“Organic”
 No additives, chemical fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, or GM foods
 Reasons to buy organic:
o For what it doesn’t contain
o For what it does contain
o Environmental concerns (only legitimately scientific one)
 Use copper sulfate as a fungicide
 Use rotenone (from derris plant) as a pesticide – linked with Parkinson’s
 Nutrition depends on variety type, soil quality, fertilizers, crop rotations, maturity at
harvest, transportation…
 May be beneficial in babies because still developing
 Uses manure (for fertilizer) but often is contaminated
Organic vs. Conventional
 vegetable soup tested for salicylic acid (prevents blood clots)
o Organic 6x (0.06mg), but still very small in comparison to aspirin (81mg)
 Antioxidant levels higher in organic tomatoes, though not higher in blood stream
Apples can have 36 pesticide residues
80% of fresh foods were residue-free; 90% of processed
Big Bang company – food is grown on fields of magnets
Fit of Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond
 Simple solutions to feeling and eating better – food combining ( = eating less)
 Their science is absurd, thinks FDA is a fraud
Herbal Remedies
 Using plants to cure ailments (nothing synthetic)
 The Chelsey Physics Garden – London 1673: all medical plants
 Supplement industry is approx. $25 billion/year
 40% of people use herbal remedies (2.3 herbs/person), and ½ didn’t tell their doc
 composition impossible to determine, no regulations
 Echinacea (common cold cure) originally part of Clark Stanley’s Snake oil (to aid in
arthritis)
 DIN # - A. Vogel has them
o Cant patent natural remedies, proving they are safe and somewhat effective
is enough
o NPN (natural product number) – show that its made in a clean lab, its
standardized, compounds stated, and safe, NOTHING ABOUT EFFICACY
 Ginseng – a panacea (cure for all illnesses) ?
o Brain stimulant, hormone properties
o Cold FX – Edmonton: reduces risk of getting a second cold if take everyday
o Looks like Chinese silk vine (hormone)  baby with public hair
o 8/22 supplements have pesticides quintozene and benzene (carcinogens)
 Saw Palmetto – a berry to treat urinary issues
o For benign prostate hyperplasia… works in some men & not others
 Ginko Biloba – improves mental function
o Increases cerebral circulation…doesn’t translate to better mental capacity
o Interferes with anticoagulants, if on blood thinners  stroke
 Garlic – Adolphus Hohensee loooved it
o Insert into anus  weird
o Contains allicin  only when cooked/crushed
 Lowers cholesterol, increases immune system – conflicting results
 Kava kava – anxiety reducing (virgins shit it out then diluted and drank ?!)
o Large doses linked with liver problems – illegal in Canada
 Ephedra – curb appetite (Metabolife)
o Deaths (Steve Beckler) , seizures, strokes… not required to tell health
Canada. Banned US, regulated Canada
o Replaced by bitter orange – very similar
Purity
 Some contains fenfluramine – appetite suppressant and heart damager
 St. John’s Wort interacts with cyclosporine (given to transplant - immune
suppressant) bc it makes Cytochrome P-450 enzymes which break it down
 Chinese Herb nephropathy (Belgium weight loss clinic) used the wrong plant,
wanted Stephania tetrandra, got Aristolochia  aristolochic acid  kidney failure
Functional Foods (neutraceuticals)
 Provide health benefits beyond plain nutrition
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Iodized salt, iron in cereal, folic acid in flour (birth defects), margarines with stanols
and sterols (reduce cholesterol), flax bagels (increases omega3)
Wonderbread added Ca – not functional food bc not enough to be beneficial
Chicken soup – nothing added; helps cause mucus flow faster …
John Harvey Kellogg ~lived till 91
 Ran the Sanitarium which because the central core of health food business
 All diseases started in the colon – performed 23 000 operations so they had less to
get infected…
 Had the most enemas, colon cleansings, of any human (morning and night)
o Yogurt flush to drive out disease forming bacteria (Elie Metchnikoff)
 Suggested exercise
 Electrified people (reenergize), inhale radium, sit in a light box (cures seasonal
affective disorder…though not why he did it)
 Disciple of Sylvester Graham – therefore meat was proinflammatory (chimps threw it
back, but ate the banana)
 Had a calorie count
 Fletcherize suggested 32 teeth therefore 32 chews
 Wheat flakes – ground up a hard loaf of bread
 Movie on his life “the road to Wellville”
Will Kellogg
 Added sugar to the cereal – frosted flakes
 Put his picture on the box, and his signature
Charlie Post
 Invented Post Grapenuts flakes - had neither nuts or grapes but sounded healthy
Yogurt – Lactobacillus bulgaricus
 Compete for nutrients with harmful bacteria, release chemicals destroying bad ones
o Cosmonaut yogurt from Russian astronaut poo
 Probiotics –food that contain specific microorganisms to alter microbes in the body
ex. acidophilus and bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus GG (can cure bowel stuff)
 Montefiore Medical Center, Dr Brant: patient with diarrhea due to C. difficle
o Introduced fecal matter to colonize the bacteria .. and it worked
 Prebiotics – foods we cannot digest and go straight to the colon (beneficial bacteria)
o feed these bacteria (Lactobacilli bifidobacteria) and squeeze out the bad ones
o degrade nitrosamines, inhibit ecoli, improve Ca absorption, anti cancer
o Insulin – fructose polymer 60 units (found in Jerusalem artichokes)
o FOS – smaller than 10 units per chain
 Synbiotics contain pre and probiotics
 Cocoa powder is the ultimate neutraceutical – contains more antioxidants than
blueberries or green tea
FOOD ADDITIVES
Toxic wax on fruits: beeswax, carnauba wax, candelilla wax, shellac
 Morphaline (in wax) + nitrites  nitrosomorpholine (known carcinogens)
 Nitrites in cabbage, not a big deal, dose is important
Good ol’ days:
 Add lead acetate to wine to sweeten
 Copper salts added to veggies to make them greener
 Used arsenic oxide to whiten flour ? are you KIDDING ME
 Typhoid was prevalent… due to no control
Safrole: used as a flavouring in Root Beer, shown to be carcinogenic, but can buy
sassafras leaves in health food stores (not anymore, ecstasy)
Salt - #1 food additive in Canada (#2 in US: they count sugar)
 10 lbs
 only some people are susceptible to high BP
 can use KCl – but not really the same… hard to recreate taste
 excellent preserving agent (against bacteria – Louis Pasteur “disproved
spontaneous generation”) through osmosis (dehydrates bacteria)
Sugar
 also a good preserving agent, for the same reason
total food additives: 150lbs/person/year (sugar 40lbs, salt ect ect, the CLASSICAL additives
represent 1lb – 2000 different chemicals) very minute
Polydipsia- love love water, need to drink all the time (can kill you)
5 tastes – sour, sweet, salty, bitter, umami (kikunae ikeda 1908)
MonoSodium Glutamate MSG – (Glutamic acid and salt)
 naturally in seaweed
 enhances flavour of food
 increases sensitivity, and salivation
 Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (Kwok’s Disease 1968) similar heart attack
 Molasses –bacteria glutamic acid –NaOH MSG
 Reaction to it does not involve the immune system (masked food allergy)
Every year 200 people die of anaphylactic shock
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EpiPen – epinephrine (adrenaline)
STP (sodium tripolyphosphate)
 Retains moisture (added to meat, to avoid drying out in cooking)
 In cleaning agents (calcium), Kraft Dinner, ect ect, not in bombs 
Drying and smoking fish c’est bon – smoke contains toxic chemicals (Red Herring...goes
red when its smoked)
Pickles – cucumbers in brine – semi permeable membrane – osmosis
Electric charge is only around one electrode … questionable
Food Poisoning
 Canada ~2 million cases with 30 deaths
 US ~20-80 million cases with 10,000 deaths
 Samonella – organic peanuts, Listeria Monocytogenes (young, old, AIDS, and
pregnant women), E.Coli 0157:H7
 On the rise…
o Better reporting
o Increased meat consumption
o Increased lifespan
o Increased traveling
o Industrial farming
o Use of antibiotics in animal feeds
Emulsifiers
 Polysorbate 60
 Gycerides
Artificial Flavour
 1800 chemicals
 500 chemicals in apples
 choose some main ones to duplicate a flavour
 nature identical: same chemical (among others) that is present naturally
 imitation identical: chemicals have little in common with naturally occurring
o charocoal flavour- grabs the least toxic chemicals so safer
Colour
 Beta-carotene
 Canthaxantin
 Tanning pills 1.5g – beta-carotene is precursor to vitamin A, accumulate in the eye
and crystallize
 Butter – colour added in the winter, bc cows don’t eat grass (feed carrots)
 Cochineal red – female bugs scraped off cacti (salami, ice cream)
 Food 5 mcg
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Synthetic (coal tar) dyes: certified – citrus orange to colour orange skin
Dr. Ben F. Feingold – synthetic dyes … ADHD?
Named in Canada, numbered in US
Yellow #5 - tartrazine (allergic)
Red #2 - amaranth (carcinogenic to test animals… banned US)
Red #40 - allura red
Red #3 – maraschino cherries [thyroid tumors in male rats (only if you ate 14,000
daily servings of fruit cocktail for 70 days)
Carcinogenic – it must have been shown to cause cancer in test animals, AND when
people are exposed to it exhibit a higher cancer rate (high dose animal studies may not
reflect human exposure and risk)
Association does not imply causation
A cup of coffee contains 50mg of KNOWN carcinogens, but number one source of
antioxidant in the diet
Sodium benzoate – preservative reacts with citric acid in fruit drinks  benzene
Nitrites
 In hotdogs
 Preservatives (stops botulism)
 Taste, colour
 MbFe (meyoglobin in meat gives a blue red colour) Fe+2 gets oxidized Fe+3 and the
meat looks brown. MbFeNO… keeps colour
 Nitrites to nitrosamines … very small, >90% natural (cabbage)
 Vitamin C prevents conversion of nitrites to nitrosamine
 DMNA (dimethylnitrosamine) – murder but metabolized quickly cirrhosis
Anti-oxidants (citric acid- chelating agent, BHA, sodium sulphate)
 Oxygen browns fruits and veggies (cutting apple with metal is a catalyst)
 BHT, BHA traps free radicals - stops oxidizes fat (rancid)
 Sulfites are allergens many deaths (potatoes, grapes, French fries)
EDTA – chelating agent forms a cage to stop the metal from reacting, in mayonnaise
Calcium Propionate – added to bread
 Anti fungal agent
 Rye esp. prone to ergot (dangerous hallucinations ~LSD)
 Witches of Salem – prone to hallucination, 19 women were hanged
o “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller (in the McCarty Era 1950)
 Pont St Esprit – ate flour contaminated with ergot
Radishes – goitergens
Cheese – tyramine
Oranges – tangeratin
Celery – goitergens
Carrots – myristicin
Bananas – serotonin
Apples – phlorizin