Justin Stoneman.Justin Stoneman is a writer, broadcaster, producer and composer.
    
America, I love you. Sure, you’ve had your naughty moments, but what country hasn’t? Ultimately, I believe your filthy, battered heart is in the right place. This particular Irishman gazes over the ocean, happy to dream your dream.

Yet, the title staring down at you is said as ‘fact’. Disagree? OK, good, then let us begin…

Latest figures confirm the ridiculous: three out of four of you will be ‘overweight or obese’ by 2020. To gauge perspective: there are now more ‘fat’ people than ‘white’ people in America. Perhaps our bigots of the future will swing their hatred away from ‘race’ to the slim and healthy.

The shrinking minority are, indeed, the shrinking minority.

Stupid? Welcome to a population who know less about what they put into their mouths than they do about, well, take your pick…celebrities or cars or American Idol or iPhones? Animals have the intelligence to know what to eat and to never get fat (except the ones fed by humans). Yet that simple challenge, gaining nourishment without destroying the body, is beyond your capabilities?

Perhaps this crime is forgivable, purely symptomatic of the dietary ‘misinformation’ in circulation. However, the truly unforgivable stupidity has been in allowing this misinformation to propagate. To have believed the lies, to have fallen for the tricks, to have remained oblivious to the motives. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Insanity,” declared Einstein. “Is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Was the sharp little man predicting your strategy against the impending obesity epidemic? Thirty years of repeating the same mistakes. Not just failing to halt the crisis, but actually exacerbating it.

And the new plan today? Fundamentally, it is identical. Michelle Obama’s current, corporate-led, child obesity campaign scores 100% on well meaning — and 0% on wholesale change. All that matters, what you are told to put in your mouth, is aligned to the same destructive, corporate-sponsored dietary doctrine. I apologize for my original accusation America, this is not stupidity — it is insanity.

Einstein is no longer around to identify and solve your problems. However, a little-known Welsh obesity researcher, Zoe Harcombe, may be the surprising, next-best hope for salvation. For the last six months, I have been peeling through the twenty years of obesity research that she has accumulated. Some insight will be shared in her upcoming publication ‘The Obesity Epidemic’. If you want to know why you’re fat, and who wants to keep you that way, I suggest you head to the Welsh valleys and plead with her for a little chat.

From an informed perspective, let me shine a little light…

Americans (still) rule the world. They can stroll on the moon, influence global diplomacy, finance unstable countries around the world…yet they cannot keep their own people relatively healthy? Of course they could, if it were actually desired. Unfortunately, for the world’s most powerful companies, an unhealthy America is, perversely, a very profitable America.

If I own a sock company, I need people with feet to maintain my business. Similarly, if I own a diet company (total combined U.S. industry value: est. $45-$100 billion), I need fat people. Luckily for the diet industry, the even more powerful food industry (estimated value: astronomical — U.S. food-based retailing alone >$1,200 billion) make their main profits from cheap processed foods. Foods which make people fat.

The medical industry is similarly grateful — the unhealthy obese are as vital for their profit margins as oil is to the oil business. And we’ve seen what happens when the oil industry has their supply stream compromised.

So, if industries (with a combined net worth and power exceeding many actual countries), need a vital supply chain to survive, we can safely say that they will probably work out how to get it.

They need fat people. So what do they do?

People in America like to think that they eat with freedom. Ultimately, however, they can only pick what is presented to them, and what they can afford. Then, the decision is based on what they believe to be healthy, tasty and safe. With that in mind, can you imagine how great it would be for the industries mentioned above, if dietary advice given could be contained and restricted to just one organization that they could pour money into? That scenario is not just some North Koreanesque wet dream. It is USA 2010.

The ADA (American Dietetic Association) has complete monopoly on dietary advice. To keep the bubble airtight, the full might of the law has even been implemented. Kim Jong-il would be proud of the attention to detail.

Staggeringly, in 46 out of 50 States, the message the authorities want you to have is protected. The law determines who is able to provide you with nutritional advice.

The Commission on Dietetic Registration is the credentializing agency for the ADA. A practicing dietician not registered with the ADA or CDR is liable to face prosecution in over 90% of the country.

With that in mind, who precisely is ‘sponsoring’ the ADA and the nutritional advice you receive?

My friends, it is a beautiful army. Partners (recent and current — and their latest annual revenue figures):

Coca Cola (revenue $31.4 billion), GlaxoSmithKline (revenue $42.5 billion), Hershey’s (revenue $5.3 billion), Unilever (revenue $55.8 billion), Aramark (revenue: $12.3 billion). There are even some ‘premier sponsors’: Mars (revenue: $30 billion), PepsiCo (revenue $44.3 billion), Truvia sweetener (revenue of parent company Cargill: $116.6 billion), Kellogg’s ($12.7 billion).
ADA ‘sponsors’ have combined revenues of over $400 billion.

Why are these gargantuan companies — whose only intention is to make money, not make you healthy — allowed to fund the ADA?

The ADA themselves can perhaps assist us. On their own website (in the section where they are trying to seduce corporate America), they offer a helping hand:

Why Become an ADA Sponsor?

As ADA past president Martin Yadrick stated in a 2008 US News & World Report article: “We think it’s important for us to be at the same table with food companies because of the positive influence that we can have on them.”

But, Martin, darling, they are paying you to be at their table. You are publicly telling America that you are somehow the one wearing the trousers in the relationship? My headline must be correct — even the ADA seem to think that America is stupid.

So, with the system in place, what would be the ideal message that corporate America could choose to create to strengthen their businesses?

If you want to know when (and how) the obesity epidemic started, you do not need a degree in science to understand the details. Just a simple little line, that a child could understand, will tell you all you need to know.

Have a look at the graph below. Notice the steady line for decades and then the upward leap from 1977 onwards?

 

What strange event happened in 1977? Elvis died; perhaps the aliens who took him started to replace his fellow Americans with clones of fat, singing, hamburger-addicts? The truth is no less remarkable.

In 1977 America changed its health advice. In a nutshell (or, more likely, an ADA approved Mars bar): Eat more starchy foods, eat more carbohydrates, saturated fats are bad. If that sounds like pretty good advice to you, then you don’t know enough about what you are putting into your mouth.

Your grandparents were raised in a generation aware that God’s supermarket was better than man’s. Saturated fat was a vital part of their diet. For them, obesity was not a common health problem. They were not suffering malnutrition in the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). Remarkably, you, dear Western reader, probably are.

A processed product with ‘zero fat’ stamped on it (invariably high in sugar, chemicals and carbs instead) is great for making profits, but useless for losing weight. Wreaking havoc with insulin and your body’s biochemistry is not clever. The majority of the western world now do so on a daily basis.

If you want to have some fun with graphs, you can go and look at the corresponding obesity spikes in other countries when they followed the 1977 change in US advice.

In Canada, the point was near-parallel. In Britain it happened in 1983. The Australians struck around the time of the Brits, launching their magically stupid ‘Health Pyramid’. The obesity rate in each territory began its steady ascent. Big fat corporate party time.

Your commercially sponsored weight loss advice is making you gain weight. It would be laughable, a comic irony, if the consequences were not so tragic. From diabetes to obesity to cancer to heart disease, the price being paid for corporate profit is in lives.

It is not up to me to tell you the science; research that yourself. Do it thoroughly, the corruption and manipulation of facts is on a far greater, more shocking scale than the story I have detailed so far.

Look at the true details of the Keys’ ‘Seven Countries’ study. How the food industry have used it to falsely demonize fats and change global policies. How we have been lied to about the relevance of calories. How the false ‘crimes of cholesterol’ can be simply resolved by picking up a globe and looking at the proximity to the equator of the ‘Seven Countries’ involved in the study.

Educate yourself and spot the lies that your trusted sources are feeding you. Alarmingly, few supposed ‘experts’ are free from bias. Including many learned figures who try to voice opinion on this great site. Do not ever underestimate the power of industry and the corrupting influence of money. People have vested interests and through intent, ignorance (or a dangerous combination of both), preach some unforgivable lies.

This issue is about money. This issue is about race. Obesity in black Americans is 50% higher than that of white Americans. Obesity in Hispanics is 25% higher than that of white Americans.

Obesity rates are highest in the poor – they are the ones who rely on cheap processed foods to feed their families.

The poor, carb-addicted fatties make the thin, rich shareholders very happy.

America is, of course, no more ‘stupid’ than other nations. Across the western world, nutritional advice has been polluted by the omnipotent corporations who profit from ill health. However, USA, the world looks to you for a guiding light.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Spot the devil. Uncover the scientific facts about fat and carbohydrates. Stand up for the truth. Or stay big, stay fat and stay stupid.

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Physical education is key to improving a child’s confidence, brainpower and long-term health

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

One of the most important things parents can give to their children is a physical education or involvement in organized sports activity. Physical education has slipped in priority over the last few years, especially in our public schools. Some schools don’t even have recess anymore. They’re producing children that can (sometimes) pass standardized tests at the academic level, but who are obese, diabetic, predisposed to heart disease and likely to live a relatively short life with high medical costs and lots of pain and suffering to boot. But what good is an education program that educates children on academics if those students won’t live a productive, healthy life using their academic skills?

That’s why I think physical education needs to be put back into our public schools as a top priority. Ten minutes of recess a day is not enough. Beyond recess, parents would do well to get their kids involved in additional physical education programs, like after-school programs or organized sports — anything that involves moving the body, whether it’s running track, playing soccer, playing basketball, practicing gymnastics… you name it. These are all excellent for children.

 

Healthy body, healthy mind

Why are these activities so beneficial? They not only physically help the child’s body be healthier in terms of immune system function, circulation, strength, flexibility and hand/eye coordination, they also greatly enhance the child’s self-image. Participation in sports can dramatically boost children’s self-esteem.

When I was in grade school, we had something called the Presidential Physical Fitness Program. As I understand it, that program no longer exists, but it was an excellent program. It tested each grade school child in a few basic areas, such as doing pull-ups, situps and running, and it awarded them badges for various levels of physical achievement. One of the program’s mottos, as I remember from the badges I earned, was: “A sound body, a sound mind.”

That program was right on the mark. Being physically fit is more than just physical. It also delivers benefits to your mind. It alters your personality in a positive way. It changes a person for the better, and being involved in an organized social sport gives a child social skills, teamwork skills and many other socially-oriented skills that will be a huge benefit to that child as he or she progress into adulthood.

 

Silly parents

Amazingly, I’ve heard some parents come up with the most unbelievable excuses for not involving their children in physical activities or organized sports programs. One parent told me she didn’t want her daughter, a seventh-grader, to play soccer because she thought all women who played soccer end up with bulky-looking legs, and she didn’t want her daughter to have ugly, bulky legs. Unbelievable, huh?

This is a case where a parent, who greatly misunderstands what physical fitness does to the physical beauty of a person, has made a decision that will impair her child’s development in an important way. That child wants to play soccer, but the parent is more worried about the cosmetic appeal of her daughter’s legs than in actually giving her daughter an opportunity to be physically fit and participate in a sport that she enjoys. That kind of ignorance plays out millions of times a day across our country and around the world, as parents who lack good information on the benefits of sports and physical fitness make poor decisions about the activities of their children. These poor parenting decisions negatively impact the potential of those children for the rest of their lives.

 

Afraid to risk losing at a sport

Other parents say they don’t want their children participating in sports where there are losers. They want everyone to be a winner, and they’re afraid to have their child ever lose a game, miss an award or appear as a loser. This attitude is based on some kind of bizarre overprotection syndrome, I suppose. In the real world, there are winners and losers. There are consequences for doing a poor job, whether it’s in sports, business, real estate, personal relationships or anything else that you choose to pursue.

It’s essential that children learn early on that the investment and dedication they put into some effort will pay off in terms of winning versus losing, or in terms of being awarded the gold medal instead of the bronze medal.

Interestingly, not everybody has to be a winner to gain benefits from physical activity. In fact, all that’s required is participation. You could come in last place on the track team every single time and yet still be way ahead of the other children who don’t exercise at all. You could be the worst free-throw shooter in basketball and still derive physical, mental and nervous system benefits from playing that sport.

 

Exercises boosts intelligence and mood

Along those lines, a lot of parents don’t realize that children who participate in physical activity have healthier brains and nervous systems. They are far less likely to ever be diagnosed with depression, Attention Deficit Disorder or any other so-called mental disorder. Children who participate in sports are all around healthier — mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. Some of those benefits come from the training itself and the chemical changes that take place in the brain in response to such training, but other benefits are derived from simply receiving the sunlight and fresh air.

I’ve frequently talked about natural sunlight and the tremendous benefits of exposing your skin to sensible levels of ultraviolet radiation. Those benefits include the prevention of various cancers, depression, osteoporosis, diabetes and the enhanced absorption of calcium, which makes stronger bones. If you want your child to have strong bones, then he or she needs to get some sunshine and physical activity, along with decent nutrition that includes calcium and magnesium. Organized sports are a great way to expose your child to these elements so that he or she can develop strong bones. (And that’s why sports involvement actually reduces the risk of injury overall.)

 

Don’t poison your children with fluoride

Speaking of strong bones, when I was in grade school, I had a friend who broke at least one bone every year. All through school, it was sort of a running joke that this guy had weak bones. It didn’t occur to me until years later why he had weak bones. The answer was fluorosis. He was being overdosed with fluoride.

He had the classic signs — most notably the discoloration of the front teeth and the broken bones. Excessive exposure to fluoride will cause both of these effects. Parents have been brainwashed into exposing their children to way too much fluoride by the dental industry, which is so far behind on safety that it still actually promotes putting mercury into the mouths of children and expectant mothers through the use of dental fillings. If you have a child who has been breaking bones too easily, you might want to check out their fluoride intake. Too much fluoride will cause weakening of the bones and, of course, dental fluorosis.

 

Sports are worth the time, effort and cost

Getting back to physical education, I believe that involvement in sports or regular physical activities is one of the greatest gifts any parent can give their child. So parents, even if it costs you money, even if it’s an inconvenience to pick up your child after school or take them to soccer practice, do it. It is worth it for the future of that child — not only for their physical health but also for their mental health. Whatever money and effort you put into sports today will be more than made up for in the future by your child’s lack of medical bills and prescription medications, thanks to the fact that he or she is far healthier than other children who participated in no physical activity.

 

Be an example of physical fitness

What about children who say they don’t want to participate in any physical activity? Should you force them to do it? Well, to answer that question, let me pose another question: What are you, the parent, doing with your level of physical activity?

Children will mimic parents. If you smoke cigarettes, they’re likely to smoke cigarettes. If you do drugs, they’re likely to do drugs, and if you avoid physical exercise and sit on the couch for six hours a day watching television, guess what? They’re going to end up doing something similar. For them, it might be playing video games on the XBox instead of watching TV, but it’s still time spent sitting, doing nothing physical.

As a parent, you need to be the example. You need to get off your own butt and start engaging in physical activity if you want to encourage your child to do the same thing.

 

Many obese adults have obese children; it’s not genes, it’s called parental modeling

Some misinformed doctors say obesity is genetic because they look at parents and their children, and they draw the incorrect conclusion that, because both are obese, it must be genetic. The truth is, they’re both obese because the parent refuses to exercise, and the child mimics the parent. Plus, they both follow the same obesity-promoting diet. It has nothing to do with genes and everything to do with something called parental modeling.

Children will model their behavior on those around them, especially those in positions of authority, which, of course, includes parents. If you want your child to be physically active, the most important thing you can do is set an example. If you refuse to be physically active, and yet you demand that they participate in sports, you’re sending an incongruent message, which is, “Do what I say, not what I do.” It’s just like parents who smoke cigarettes and then punish their child for taking up smoking. It’s an incongruent message, and it confuses children. It makes them frustrated, angry or rebellious, and chances are that your efforts to get them involved in physical exercise programs are going to fail unless you set an example first.

So find a way to work on a mini-trampoline in your own living room, do jumping jacks, take walks around the block, go swimming or biking, or play Frisbee golf. When you stay active, you’re going to create an environment in which your child is far more likely to be interested in physical exercise.

 

Don’t send a short kid to the high jump

Finally, I have one last bit of advice for parents looking at getting their children involved in physical exercise or sports programs: Look at your child’s body, and take a minute to assess what he or she might be good at. If you have a son who is short and stocky, he’s built to be good at wrestling, not the high jump. If he’s tall and lanky, he might be much better as a distance runner on the track team. If he has incredible upper body strength, he might be great at football, but if he has a weak upper body but strong lower body, he might be a great sprinter, or he might be really good at soccer.

If he has incredible cardiovascular endurance, he might excel at soccer or basketball. If he’s tall, basketball is an obvious choice. The same things hold true for younger girls as well. If your daughter has long legs and is in good cardiovascular shape, she’d be good at soccer or basketball. If she is a fast runner, she’d be great at track. If she is very thin and tall, she might be a great distance runner. Great flexibility and core strength lends itself to gymnastics or dancing. If she’s stocky, there’s always the shot put on the women’s track team!

Look at your children’s bodies and compare those bodies with professional athletes who are good at particular sports. You will notice that each professional athlete has a specific body proportion. Great cyclists, for example, tend to look very similar in terms of lower body strength versus upper body strength, leg length and so on. Great football players also have particular body proportions based on their field positions. Wide receivers are usually tall and thin with great cardiovascular endurance. Fullbacks are usually short, stocky and possess impressive leg strength combined with lightning-fast speed.

Body proportions and strengths make each child more suitable for particular activities. As a parent, it’s a great idea to help assess the strengths of your child and steer them toward the sports for which they are best suited. If they’re in the wrong sport — let’s say there’s a really short child attempting to play basketball, for example — then they could get discouraged very easily, whereas that same short child could do an outstanding job in gymnastics, for example.

In other words, don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole. We all are given a body, and we have to make the best of it. That means that no matter what our body size or shape, there are some sports and activities that we’re going to be poor at, and there are others that we’re more suited for and in which we can excel, and those are the ones that I hope you will guide your children toward. If you make the wrong choice, or if your child happens to be interested in a sport for which he or she is not well-suited, don’t discourage them; let them play anyway. Do everything you can to keep them active. Maybe they’ll play for one semester or one year, and they’ll decide to change sports on their own. Maybe they want to do baseball instead of track, or perhaps they want to study martial arts outside the school or they want to go to a gymnastics camp. Any of these things will be greatly beneficial to the health of your child in the long-term.

Remember, one of the greatest gifts you can give to your children is getting them involved in sports programs or physical exercise programs. Just remember to keep it fun, keep it safe and set the best example yourself.

And what about academics? Obviously academics are important, but health must be the higher priority in my opinion. What good is a brain stuffed full of math and science facts if the heart can’t pump oxygen to it? You can create the best test-taker in the world by cramming a child full of facts and formulas, but if he’s obese and can’t climb a flight of stairs without running out of breath, chances are that child will die of a heart attack before age 45. And then all that academic achievement is lost (because dead brains don’t think very well).

Want to know where I learned self discipline and the rewards of hard work? I ran track for four years in high school. And my coach, Robert Parks, taught me more about life than any academic teacher. I am healthy today because of the habits I learned (and eventually rediscovered) running in circles around a football field.