You Can Be Thin: The Ultimate Programme to End Dieting... Forever (15 page)

Just as we have been brainwashed into eating cereals, which are essentially cattle feed, and believing they are a healthy food, we have also been brainwashed into believing that dairy produce is a healthy food for humans. I am opposed to any diet that promotes eating a lot of dairy food. Milk contains insulin growth factor (IGF) a growth hormone, and oestrogen and progesterone, so consuming any dairy product will have an effect on your body’s natural hormone levels. Cow’s milk is not a food for humans at all, it is a product packed full of growth hormones that promote cell division and it is designed to nourish calves through their biggest growth spurt and to give them a 300 per cent weight gain within a year. A calf’s body weight doubles in six weeks then triples until within two years a 90 pound calf weighs 2000 pounds, while a human baby triples its birth weight in about twelve months. A calf is almost the same size as its parent in less than a year, while it takes human children about sixteen years to become the same size as their parents. Any food that can encourage a 300 per cent weight gain is to be avoided like the plague by humans. It cannot be a coincidence that countries that do not consume dairy have the leanest people and countries where the most dairy is consumed have the fattest people, because milk is designed to make you grow. The chemical and hormonal structure of milk stimulates huge growth in calves, it literally sends a message to their cells that says GROW! When adult humans drink cow’s milk it sends a similar message to their already fully grown bodies: GROW! I have worked with many very overweight clients who have had dramatic and permanent success in dropping a lot of weight just by eliminating dairy produce.

A mother’s milk delivers antibodies to her baby. Cow’s milk delivers the cow’s antibodies, hormones and chemicals to humans. You can buy low-fat and even non-fat cow’s milk but you cannot buy non-growth hormone milk because milk literally is a growth hormone that promotes cell division and rapid growth. It makes many humans grow bigger than they were ever meant to be because it was not designed for humans. None of us wants to grow and develop like a cow. Dairy produce is the cause of allergies in many people and has been linked to the occurrence of headaches, sinusitis, indigestion, nausea, diarrhoea, cramps, irritable bowel syndrome, ear infections and breathing problems. The oestrogen and progesterone in milk can be a cause of acne, eczema and many other skin conditions. When you consume dairy produce you are consuming a hormonal delivery system.

Dairy foods can be disruptive to humans when consumed excessively and have been linked to infertility, prostate cancer and breast tumours. Some researchers believe that the insulin growth factor in milk and lactose, the type of sugar found in milk, can over stimulate the production of hormones which may encourage tumour growth. The higher our levels of insulin growth factor, the higher risk we have of developing certain cancers. In some Scandinavian countries women who have had breast tumours are advised to have a dairy-free diet permanently. In China they call breast cancer rich white women’s illness. The Chinese who have breast cancer are mostly those who eat a Western diet. In Asian countries, where they eat very little dairy, breast cancer rates are the lowest in the world. Apparently, Japanese people can smell undigested milk in the guts of Westerners, and you may remember me mentioning that singers routinely avoid milk as it is so mucus forming it has a negative effect on their voice.

Non-organic milk is polluted with hormones, pesticides, steroids, antibiotics and is full of synthetic hormones. In modern intensive factory-farming cows are kept in milk all year round by being injected with bovine growth hormones. A cow should produce 10lb of milk daily but the hormones they are injected with make them produce up to a 100lb of milk daily. In factory farming, the cows are milked by machine and the machines extract cow’s pus and blood along with the milk. All milk can be 50 per cent mucus and has to be pasteurised to kill the bacteria, but the pasteurising process also kills any beneficial enzymes. Even pregnant cows are milked and this is very unhealthy as that milk is loaded with bovine hormones. Up to two thirds of our milk comes from pregnant cows. It contains thirty-five different hormones and eleven different growth factors. Drinking milk is taking in cows’ hormones, synthetic hormones and bovine antibiotics. I avoid cheese and ice cream as they are nothing more than concentrated cows’ milk. I used to like ice cream but by seeing it for what it really is it is makes it easier to refuse. If you want to learn more about the negative effects of milk visit
www.notmilk.com
,
www.dumpdairy.com
or read
Your Life in Your Hands
by Dr Jane Plant (Virgin Books).

I was on a flight and when the stewardess brought over my meal tray I told her I had ordered a dairy-free meal. The woman next to me said, ‘Don’t you eat dairy?’ ‘No,’ was my reply. ‘But it comes from a cow,’ she said. ‘Yes, and gorilla milk comes from a gorilla, and dog’s milk from a dog and you know what I don’t eat that either,’ I replied. We have been so brainwashed to believe that milk is good for us but no other animal on the planet drinks the milk of another species. No adult animal on the planet drinks its mother’s milk at all. We share 96 per cent of our DNA with chimpanzees but we would never drink ape’s milk, yet we drink the milk of a species so vastly different to us and expect our body to digest it.

After the Second World War the Milk Marketing Board heavily promoted milk as a health food and the promotion worked. It is not a health food, it is very unhealthy. Cheese protein has opiates in it and is highly addictive and extremely unhealthy. It is not true that we need extra dairy produce for the calcium needed for healthy bones. A recent study in the May 2005 issue of the journal
Paediatrics
concludes that there is little evidence that increasing dairy produce is the right way to promote bone health in children. Drinking a lot of milk is not the best way to get calcium. Nutrition researchers from Harvard and Cornell Universities in the United States believe that exercise, hormone levels, smoking, hereditary factors, protein intake and most importantly our intake of vitamins D and K matter more than our intake of cow’s milk when it comes to osteoporosis and healthy bones. We all need calcium but we don’t need excessive amounts of dairy produce in order to get it.

In a study known as ‘The China Study’, also available as a book, Dr T. Colin Campbell found that Asians who consume far less dairy than Westerners have one fifth of the bone fractures we have. Asians get their calcium from green leafy vegetables. The countries that consume the most cows’ milk have the highest fracture rates and the worst bone health. In Africa, the Masaii are the only tribe among the forty tribes in Kenya and Tanzania who suffer with osteoporosis. The Masaii are also the only tribe who own cattle and drink a lot of milk.

We can actually take in too much dairy. Animal protein, and in particular the protein in milk, makes our blood and tissue more acidic, and in order to neutralise this acid the body pulls calcium from our bones. The most important factors for healthy bones are exercise, especially weight-bearing exercise, and Vitamin D which our bodies get from sunlight. Fifteen minutes of sun exposure on our face and arms will give us enough vitamin D. If you avoid the sun or use sun block you need to take vitamin D supplements unless you regularly eat eggs and oily fish (natural sources of vitamin D).

Children up to the age of ten produce lactase in their bodies naturally, which does break down the lactose (the milk sugar) in milk. After ten it becomes harder for our bodies to process milk, so while small children can tolerate milk adults can’t. Therefore you don’t need to take milk away from children but adults do not need it and cannot digest it properly. No human can break down the casein, the protein in milk, and many humans (studies say up to 75 per cent) are lactose intolerant, the undigested lactose encourages bacteria growth in our intestines.

When you eat a food that your body can’t digest easily it can’t absorb much nutrition from it. As a consequence you will still be hungry after eating or hungry again very soon after eating because your body is consuming empty calories and not enough nutrients. If you are still hungry after eating or always hungry it’s a sign you are eating food your body cannot work with or efficiently adapt to. Limiting wheat and dairy is not the same as going on a diet. You don’t have to go hungry or count calories. You can eat very well and eat very healthy food while shedding weight – you simply have to make other choices.

The worst food combines the two most indigestible foods – wheat and dairy – or more literally glue and mucus: food like pizza, pasta with cheese sauce, cereal with milk, bread and butter, crackers and cheese, milk and cookies, cheese sandwiches, quiche, muffin and cappuccino, toast and hot chocolate. I hate going to coffee houses because they are full of wheat and dairy – cakes, sandwiches, milky drinks and high-sugar drinks – and have few alternatives. Luckily when you cut down on one you naturally cut down on the other.

You do not have to cut milk out of your diet completely but you need to restrict your intake of it. It takes 10 pounds of milk to make just 1 pound of cheese and 12 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of ice cream, so just cutting out cheese will naturally cut a lot of milk from your diet. If you switch to soya yogurt and cream or use olive oil in place of butter and use milk alternatives in place of some regular milk you are already making a huge improvement. If you cannot even conceive of giving up your tea with milk at least buy organic lactose-reduced milk, it is kinder to your digestion but you still need to use it sparingly. Lactose (milk sugar) is also used as a sweetener in many convenience foods, prepackaged meat and baked goods, it’s even in ham so you may be consuming far more of it than you are aware of.

I couldn’t get used to black tea so I switched to mint tea, then I found that rice milk tastes great in tea and even my builders drank it and could hardly tell the difference. I used to love milky tea and experimented for some time with milk alternatives. I found that vanilla or plain rice milk is lovely in tea and coffee. Soya milk is a little too nutty but I love soya on oats and I love warm soya milk with cinnamon in it. There are many good milk alternatives; organic soya milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, even milk made from peas and sunflower oil. There are good yogurt alternatives too so cutting down on dairy really isn’t as limiting as you’d think. Just make sure you choose the unsweetened varieties.

By the way, eggs are not dairy – cows
do not
lay eggs. Chickens have nothing in common with cows and it amazes me that when I tell people to restrict dairy they tend to ask if that includes eggs. Again, it is brainwashing. Because shops place eggs next to milk and because the food pyramid puts eggs and milk together we have linked them in our minds. See how easy it is to get brainwashed? But it is also easy to undo it.

So now I’ve told you about all the negative effects of glue and mucus, I want to show you how strongly your body reacts to foods that contain them. You don’t have to eat anything to see the effects, just try the exercises below and they’ll give you an astounding illustration of what your body’s been trying to tell you for years.