Addictive Foods

25. June 2007 William Davis (3)
Kraft Foods, Inc. is manufacturer of Kool Aid, Oscar Mayer, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Velveeta, Honey Maid Grahams, and hundreds of other processed food products. Post cereals also falls under the umbrella of Kraft with products like Raisin Bran, Post Toasties, and Fruity Pebbles. Annual revenues in 2006 for Kraft: $34.4 billion. A big operation with enormous influence over our eating habits.

Nabisco is manufacturer of Oreos, Ritz Crackers, Chips Ahoy and many others. Like Kraft/Post, it is also a big player.

While Nabisco was owned for several years by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds, in 2000 it was acquired by Philip Morris, another big tobacco manufacturer.

More recently in Spring, 2007, Philip Morris (now called Altria--you'd change your name, too, if it was synonymous with dirt) spun off its Kraft subsidiary for a big profit. However, the management structures remain intertwined.

In other words, despite the shuffling of shares, the two industries, big tobacco and big food, are in many respects one and the same.

Is it any surprise that the same industry that made billions of dollars pushing addictive nicotine products responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is now intimately involved with addictive products produced and marketed by the processed food industry?

If you believe that food manufacturers are innocently and honestly conducting their businesses, simply think back to the testimony provided in front of Congress during the tobacco industry hearings. Broad deception, concealed truths, and outright lies were commonplace. There was no conscience involved. This was about money--and lots of it.

Why should the processed food industry, intimate with the tobacco industry, be any different?

If you want control over heart disease and your heart scan score, buy produce and buy local. Spend your time in the produce aisle, not the cereal or chip aisle. Unprocessed food, unadorned by bright labels, cartoon animals, American Heart Association endorsements, that's what we should seek.
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Comments (3) -

  • JT

    6/25/2007 10:15:00 PM |

    At the store the other day I was wondering what would my mom think?  She probably would be worried that I had seriously bumped my head.  In my cart were many foods I used to NEVER eat.  There was spinach, carrots, cantaloupe, sweat potatoes, all kinds of berries, cheese, plain yogurt, mushrooms, etc.  The only processed food was a couple cans of Chili Mans turkey chili.   (It didn't taste as good as I remember it used to.)

    It took awhile to get used to the raw TYP heart health diet.  In the beginning there were times were I felt I could be lost in an episode of the Travel Channels Andrew Zimmers Bizarre Foods.  Now after a month on the diet I can seriously say I wonder why I avoided such great foods.  And if you want to see real color in your meal instead of coloring on a box of processed unhealthy food, nothing beats a plate full of fresh fruits, vegetables, and fish.

  • DietKing2

    6/25/2007 10:23:00 PM |

    Great posting, Doctor!
    Uphill battle we're all fighting, eh?
    Adam

  • Anonymous

    1/8/2011 1:51:24 PM |

    This is indeed a rough battle when trying break addiction to processed food.  Any advice is welcome.  I seem to get headaches when I try stop eating some the junk food I eat.

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Heart scan curiosities 3

Heart scan curiosities 3

10. December 2006 William Davis (7)


This is a sample image from the heart scan of a 54-year old, 212 lb, 5 ft 2 inch woman. The heart is the whitish-gray in the center; lungs are the dark (air-filled) areas on either side of the heart. Note the massive amount of surrounding gray tissues that encircles the heart and lungs. This is fat. At this weight, the diameter of total fat exceeds the combined diameter of the heart and lungs. If we were to show the abdomen, there would be even more fat. (The image shows the body not well centered because the technologist centers the heart, since this is, after all, a heart scan.)





This is a 55-year old, 151 lb, 5 ft 4 inch woman. Note the contrast in the quantity of fat tissue surrounding the chest, a much more normal appearance. Note that this woman is still around 25 lb over ideal weight, but not to the extreme degree of the woman above.

Another curious observation: Note the more whitish streaking in the heavier woman's lungs. Heart scans are performed while holding a deep inspiration (a deep breath inwards), mostly to eliminate lung respiratory motion during image acquisition. Nonetheless, the heavier woman's lungs are not as fully expanded as the more slender woman. In other words, the heavier woman cannot inflate her lungs as effectively as the thinner woman. Ever notice how breathless heavy people are? Some of this effect is just being out of shape. But there's also the added effect of the abdominal fat exerting upwards compression on the lung tissues, and the constrictive effect of the encircling fat mass. At the beginning of inspiration, the chest fat exerts the resistance of inertia to inspiration that is absent, or less, in a slender person. With each breath, the heavy woman must move 50 lbs or so of surrounding fat mass just to inhale.

The heavier woman is, in effect, suffocating herself in fat.

The distortions to the human body incurred by extreme weight gain are both fascinating and shocking. I hope you're breathing easily.
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Comments (7) -

  • Anonymous

    12/14/2006 4:55:00 PM |

    Exactly what triggers people to choose to be obese or even 20 lbs overweight? I find it disgusting.  People have to realize being overweight is unhealthly and puts that person at extreme risk for health problems. How sad it must be for young children not to have parents that can run with them in the park or worse yet lose one to heart disease, stroke or cancer.

  • Soundhunter

    1/1/2007 7:04:00 AM |

    hmmm. Me again, commenting twice.

    My 5 month old daughter has "pectus excavatum ", the docs said it's mild and won't show when she's an adult, they only seemed concerned with it for cosmetic reasons.

    I also have thought that the roof of her mouth seemed "deeper" or higher I guess you could say, than my other daughter's was in infancy. But, 5 monther with pectus excavatum doesn't have slender fingers, though she is quite long, repeated ultrasounds showed she had long legs. Is she possibly at higher risk for heart problems as an adult? Why wouldn't 2 different family docs know this, or tell me about it?

  • Dr. Davis

    1/1/2007 2:30:00 PM |

    An ultrasound of the heart, or echocardiogram, would settle the question. It's a harmless test that requires just a few minutes. If your daughter's doctor won't order it, find one that will.

  • Mo D.

    2/27/2007 2:54:00 AM |

    I'm saddened but not surprised that a doctor would call pectus excavatum just a curiosity.  I have quite a number of heart and lung ailments from my PE.  Had my doctor felt differently about PE when I was a kid and had suggested surgery, I would have suffered less than I have to having the surgery in my 30s. They say the teen years are the best time for surgical repair of PE. So yes, PE does cause heart and lung problems in adults.  At least this adult.

  • Anonymous

    2/28/2007 3:55:00 PM |

    Here's a relevant cite:
    Cardiovascular function following surgical repair of pectus excavatum: a metaanalysis.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16899852&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum

  • Paul Höppener MD Phd

    11/16/2007 6:32:00 PM |

    I am a 69 year old retired fysician.With a moderate congenital pectus excavatum. For more than 10 years I suffered from complaints like shorness of breath, fatigue and arythmia.Even a catheter ablation has been performed 4 years ago to stop Supraventricular tachycardia of 220.min. After 3 months a more moderate tachycardia returned. My complaints where posture dependent: bending or pressure on the upper abdomen or the pectus cavity did increase the problems.
    CT showed cardiocompression!
    To go short: after corrective surgery (Ravitch) my complaints have totally disappeared. I could stop with all medicines, can walk uphill agian and cycle with proper speed. Reborn without reincarnation.
    Lesson: symptomatic pectus excavatum can also happen to senior people an dcorrective surgery is worth while.
    See also:  http://www.spesweb.nl/SPES_English.htm

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 2:54:30 PM |

    It could mean that some attention and exploration of how floppy his mitral valve might be could be useful, e.g., an ultrasound or echocardiogram. He might even require oral antibiotics at the time of any oral or some gastrointestinal procedures, since floppy valve are more susceptible to blood infections when potentially "dirty" orifices are instrumented.

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Non-profit hospitals

Non-profit hospitals

21. April 2007 William Davis (1)
Hospitals hide behind a veil of non-profit.

Ostensibly operating for the public good, most hospitals enjoy all the business advantages of non-profit status. This means that any profits that flow to the bottom line at the end of the year are not subject to tax. Hospitals point out that profit margins are modest, often ranging from 2-6%.

What they don’t tell you is that, regardless of non-profit status, lots of money can be paid out along the way. A hospital CEO who pays himself $4 million dollars a year can work for this non-profit organization. He can also direct the hospital in business expansion: pharmacies, extended-care facilities, medicine and medical supply distributorships. Your friendly hospital CEO, as well as his many administrators, can hold positions in hospital subsidiaries, complete with salaries and perks.

Yes, most hospitals are officially non-profit. But that’s a designation for tax purposes. It does not mean that hospitals are non-lucrative.

I believe that it’s time for hospitals to drop the façade of “Saint” in their names or other religious names—Methodist, Baptist, Jewish, All Saints’. More accurate would be something like “ABC Medical Enterprises, Inc.” That way, the public would be quicker to recognize that they are dealing with a business run by people eager to make more money.
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  • Gary Greenfield

    10/13/2007 9:03:00 AM |

    Wow, excellent insight and I wholeheartedly agree. I am of the opinion that post-modern man having abandoned an appreciation and concern  for the health of the soul has idolized the human body to such an excess that he is willing to pay any price to save his body while neglecting his own soul. The passions of those in the health care community are taking advantage of the passions of the misdirected patient. Both the physician and the patient have abandoned God and the anchor that historically kept medical care tied to a love for God and man failed long ago.  Now rather than being harbored in the peaceful waters of virtue and self sacrifice, we are shipwrecked on the rocks of greed and self love.

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